Requiescat in Pace
by Drucilla
Summary: The Thirteen Ghosts are still roaming out there, and must be put to rest. It's up to Dennis and the three witch-women to carry out that task... but does Dennis have what it takes?
1. Prologue

Author's Note: Dennis, the Kriticoses, the ghosts = Not Mine. Merry, Laurel, Amber, Sebastian, Erik, Anna, Jenna = Mine. Use at your peril. And if you look closely you can see elements of Mr. E (from Vertigo comics) and Kermit (from Kung Fu: The Legends Continue, not The Frog) in Erik. I always did think Scott Wentworth would make a good Mr. E.  
  
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They had all sat down to dinner when the man came to visit.   
  
Amber and Laurel and the twins were over to visit, which meant that Sebastian and Dennis were likely to beat a hasty retreat to the tv room as soon as possible. They'd somehow (despite the crowd of three women and one man in the kitchen) managed to get all the food on the table, with the Lady's plate in the middle. Dennis found that phenomenon particularly interesting, although the moment of silence before the meal was traditional in many households. Still, it was the first time he'd ever been part of what could conceivably be called a family. He wasn't going to begrudge people their religious observances because he found them odd.  
  
Dinner had started, and they were engaging in the traditional activity of extended families everywhere: pass the food and the gossip. Food went around to the left while gossip went around to the right; it seemed to be an unwritten rule. Amber and Dennis chatted about Merry's adventures in school, while Laurel tried to listen in and hold a conversation with Jenna at the same time. A bizarre variant of Whisper Down the Lane was occurring between Anna, Merry, and Sebastian as they all tried to debate the best method of teaching Dennis. Sebastian was inclined to a purely hermetic approach, and Anna to a purely witchy approach, while Merry (who was sandwhiched between the two) took a moderate position.  
  
They were so heavily engaged in conversation that they never heard the knock on the door till it became positively thunderous. Everyone froze, thinking the worst for a second... Dennis was for one brief moment terrified by the memory of the Hammer... and then Sebastian set his napkin and fork down and calmly went to the door.   
  
"You needn't break the door down, Erik," he said calmly, unlatching the door and opening it. "We heard you perfectly well."  
  
"Of course you didn't, Sebastian, you buffoon, otherwise you would have let me in within the first five minutes."  
  
Dennis stared.  
  
The man Sebastian had called Erik was imposing, even though Dennis stood at least two or three inches taller. He was well-muscled, in better shape than Dennis, Sebastian, or any of the girls. He was fairly well dressed, too, in slacks and a dress shirt, a trenchcoat draped over one arm. To top it all off he wore red sunglasses that neatly obscured his eyes almost entirely, and what little Dennis could see of his eyes made the man look blind. To top it all off, there was an aura of forbidding and power about the man that made Dennis never want to so much as brush against him in passing, much less shake his hand. Fortunately, he didn't offer it.  
  
"What's going on, Erik?" Sebastian said, sounding tired as he ushered Dennis back into the room and pulled up a chair. The twins moved aside wordlessly to make space for him. There was a chorus of quiet but respectful hellos from around the table.  
  
"Thank you, but I won't be staying long," Erik said dryly. "I came to warn you..." his eyes suddenly focused and looked at everyone around the table in turn. Dennis was moderately surprised that the two younger girls didn't shrink from his gaze (like he wanted to). "The ghosts you turned loose from the Ocularis Infernum are loose. They are slowly drifting back to their haunts, or so I presume from what I have heard. And most of them are wreaking havoc all along the way."  
  
A silence fell that was almost oppressive. Sebastian and Erik seemed to be communing in some sort of magical magus fashion. Merry, Amber, and Laurel were looking at each other in slowly dawning horror and dread.   
  
"I take it you plan to have us hunt down these ghosts and dismiss them from the material plane?" Sebastian said finally.   
  
"I will help, of course, if you like, but I do believe that those who created the problem should clean it up."  
  
"Unfortunately they are either deceased or imprisoned, at the moment."   
  
They seemed to be having a contest for dryness of tone. "Failing their availability, your girls know the situations best of anyone I could call in. And you, Dennis."  
  
The psychic shrank slightly under that red-tinted gaze. He wasn't blind, he could see everything about Dennis, and not only did he not like what he saw but he despised it as well, derided it. Dennis wasn't worth the scrapings on the bottom of the man's shoe...  
  
Amber and Laurel reached out and took his hands, one from each side. Warmth flooded through him, and a little bit of calm. The frenzy of self-loathing subsided.   
  
"So you want us to play Ghostbusters?" he said, sounding more brave than he'd thought he could under the circumstances. "Hey, I already tried that once, it wasn't that bad." It had been hell on earth, but he wasn't about to tell Erik that.  
  
"This will not be of the kind of mission that you can turn into a game, Rafkin," he replied. "This will not be a simple containment. It is a banishment, which I do not think you have learned to perform yet. I also do not think you will have time to learn it adequately, which means you will be along in a support capacity only. This is dangerous work, Rafkin. The girls know how much, even the young twins."  
  
They locked eyes for a moment.  
  
"Ah," Erik said after a few minutes. Somehow the atmosphere in the room seemed lighter.   
  
"If that's all you came for, Erik, surely you can stay for dinner."  
  
"No," he said, and sighed. It was the first human expression Dennis had seen out of him, ever. "I have to catch a flight for England. An old friend of mine's daughter is in trouble, and as usual he isn't around to help her."  
  
"Wh... oh. I see." No further explanations were forthcoming.   
  
Erik nodded, slipped on his coat. "I'll return as soon as I can. And you should deal with the ghosts as soon as you can," he said pointedly, looking at each of them in turn. Merry walked him to the door, taking his arm and looking oddly like a young woman out for a stroll with her uncle.   
  
"Good luck, Erik," she said quietly, and shut the door. When she turned she faced the combined gazes of everyone at the table. "Well?"  
  
Dennis took a deep breath. "It's my fault, guys... it's my fault that the Ocularis was built, I shouldn't have dragged you all..."  
  
"Dennis!" "Dennis, stop that." "Don't be silly." "Of course it's not your fault," Merry concluded, out-projecting everyone else. "And of course you won't be doing it alone. We're not a family of magic wielders so we can all go running off solo." She stepped up next to him, put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "We'll do it together. All of us." 


	2. The Juggernaut

Author's Note: I can't for the life of me remember where this was set and don't have the DVD on hand.. someone remind me? :) Thanks...  
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Dennis had been living in slowly decreasing mortal dread for the past week. Ever since Erik's abrupt pronouncement at dinner that night, he'd been certain that they were all going to pack off for parts unknown, to engage in metaphysical struggle with the ghosts of the Ocularis. Which, since the ghosts were almost entirely unpleasent people, did not bode well for Dennis' survival and insanity. When, after the first day or two, no one made any hurried preparations to leave, Dennis was confused. After the third day, he actually brought up the nerve to ask out loud.  
  
"Uh... it could just be me, I'm not exactly ... I don't really know what you guys do. But, why aren't we going after the ghosts?"  
  
They were in the massive county library, he and the three witches. For the past two days they had met here, conferring in hushed tones with each other and then scattering to the four corners of the building (also known as Public Records). Dennis had been politely put off his efforts to help, and told to do his assigned reading, that they would grab him if they needed his help.  
  
"Research," Laurel looked up at him in surprise. "Why, what did you do, go in blind?"  
  
"Well..." he paused, then shrugged slightly, a little ashamed. "Cyrus always did that part of it."  
  
Amber wrinkled her nose in disgust, and for one panicked moment Dennis thought it was directed at him. "Figures. Stupid man was never really inclined to share information unless he had to. No wonder he got killed."  
  
"See," Laurel interrupted before Amber could go on a tirade, "We figure that it's better for everyone if everyone knows what's up when we go into a dangerous situation, like we're probably going to do with these ghosts. So we're digging up everything we can... trial records, census records, birth certificates... anything we can on these ghosts before we go out and catch them. That way, we know what we're dealing with."  
  
Dennis frowned slightly. That actually made perfect sense, and he didn't really understand why it hadn't occured to him. "Oh."  
  
Laurel reached out and touched his hand, smiling. "It's okay. You haven't exactly been taught how to do this kind of thing... how to stay safe, or anything. That's what we're here for, to teach you. There's no shame in being ignorant, only in being willfully stupid."  
  
It still didn't sound good, but... "Well, when you put it that way," he shrugged wryly and gave them a little smile.  
  
"Don't worry about it." Merry hadn't looked up once from her laptop where she seemed to be busy tracking down information that couldn't be requested in their library. "Oh, DAMN."   
  
Laurel and Amber leaned over her shoulders, and Dennis moved to stand directly behind her (being taller than any of the three girls. "What?"  
  
"Oh no."  
  
She sighed and slumped over her keyboard, hands pushing her hair back from her forehead. Her voice was muffled by keyboard and desk. "Erik wasn't kidding when he said that the ghosts were wreaking havoc across the country. Look..." she reached out and pushed a button without looking up. "There's the Juggernaught, rampaging along I-74... the police are looking for a mortal serial killer, little do they know... there's the Jackal. Again, the police are looking for someone actually human. They've already attacked five people between them. And that's just some the more noticeable ones..."  
  
Laurel was staring at the screen, openmouthed in dismay. "Have... have they killed anyone?"  
  
"Doesn't say." A sound that might have been a sniffle, a gasp, or a choked laugh came from beneath the pile of hair.   
  
"We've got to get moving on this..." Amber said slowly. "On the more dangerous ones, at least."  
  
"Amber, they're almost ALL dangerous," Merry snapped, then sighed. "Sorry. It's just..."  
  
Amber put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I know... it sucks."  
  
"Dennis?"   
  
Laurel's startled exclamation made both women turn and stare. Dennis had gone stark white and looked as though he was about to faint. "Here..." Merry quickly vacated her seat and gently pulled Dennis into it. "Sit down... Dennis, breathe." He was hyperventilating. The girls all hovered over him, worried, and Merry snaked her body between him and the laptop screen, blocking his view.   
  
"Oh god..." he panted, trying to make sense of it all, trying to get ahold of himself. "It's my fault.. it's all my fault."  
  
"Dennis..." Laurel practically grabbed for his hands, even as Amber muttered a prayer to keep them out of the curious gazes of other library patrons. Merry reached behind her and switched off her laptop, one hand gently stroking Dennis' forehead. "Listen to us, okay? It's not your fault. We told you that the day the house exploded, and it's still true now. It's not your fault. You had no idea, and there was no reason you should have known. You had no idea what you were getting into. There's no way you could have stopped this by yourself."  
  
As awkward as it was, Merry reached forward and hugged him. "You did the best you could," she murmured. "It's okay. There's no shame in being scared, either. And now you've got us, and you know different. You know better. That doesn't mean you necessarily should have done anything different back then. Hindsight is always 20/20."  
  
Dennis swallowed. Between the gentle, comforting touches of Laurel and Merry and the steadfast, protective presence of Amber standing over them all, he was starting to feel a little better. He still didn't want to tell them that a good chunk of his panic and guilt wasn't just guilt over what he had done in the past, but over what he didn't want to do in the future. Not to mention the fear that he wouldn't be able to go through with it. He was terrified of banishing the ghosts and ashamed at his unwillingness to clean up the mess he'd helped make. Especially in the face of three beautiful, powerful women who seemed to be willing to drop everything at a moment's notice and do it for him.  
  
"You can do this, okay?" Laurel leaned over and hugged him too, murmuring close to his ear. "Hey, you think we're not scared? We're terrified. Maybe even more so, because trust me, knowing what you're getting into isn't always as good as it sounds. But between the four of us, maybe we can pull ourselves together and get it done. You think?"  
  
Dennis smiled weakly, extricating an arm each to wrap around Merry and Laurel. He glanced up ironically at Amber. "Funny, you don't look scared."  
  
"I'm shaking in my stylish yet inexpensively priced boots," she said, perfectly deadpan, and they all broke up laughing. "Seriously, Den. C'mon, you think we're not terrified? We've done this before too, you know, we know what we're getting into. That doesn't mean we won't do it."  
  
He nodded slowly. They sat there in silence for a minute, taking the little time they had for breathing space and comfort before they went out and confronted the ghosts.   
  
"So, how are we doing this," Dennis spoke up abruptly. "By the numbers or by who's nearest?"  
  
All three women stared at him and, as one, all three women broke up laughing.  
  
"What?"  
  
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As reassuring as the session in the library had been, it did nothing to combat the terror that Dennis and the women felt as they all drove out to Rockford, Wisconsin. They had managed to track (with some arcane use of a pendulum and a map that Dennis had never actually seen work before) the Juggernaught to that location, and Sebastian had dispatched all of them to deal with the ghost while he dealt with the Jackal. Merry was driving, which Dennis privately thought was a bad idea, since she was clearly distracted by the thought of her father facing down the ghost alone. Laurel and Amber didn't seem worried, and Dennis agreed with them. Sebastian had been grim, and seemed more than able to take care of himself.  
  
The part that worried him most about this expedition was the thought of them all with a gun. He knew he couldn't shoot for shit, and he didn't know anything about the girls' abilities with firearms. The fact that the guns were loaded with blanks wasn't much comfort. He'd heard horror stories about guns with blanks. And wasn't Brandon Lee killed with a blank? Or had that been a ... he didn't remember anymore.   
  
They'd left the house at dawn, sleepy and toting bags, blankets, and road snacks. Amber had started out driving, with Merry in the front seat with a pillow and Laurel curling up in the back seat with a blanket. She had suggested (before falling asleep) that Dennis do the same, as it was going to be a bit of a drive. It had almost been like a college road trip, and for a little while before he fell asleep, he had been able to convince himself that that was all it was. Just a normal college road trip.   
  
When the nightmares woke him up for the third time in a row, he stopped trying to go to sleep. At least he hadn't been screaming.  
  
They stopped at a gas station and filled up, Amber and Laurel clambering out of the car and stretching, while Dennis stayed curled up in the back seat and twitched. His legs were aching, but he didn't care. He didn't want to remember what they were going to have to face soon.   
  
"Hey..." Dennis yelped as Amber rapped on the windows. "Don't you want to come out and stretch ..." there was a pause as she said something that made Laurel elbow her and giggle. "Don't you want to stretch your legs?"  
  
After his heart stopped triphammering in his chest he admitted that it wasn't a bad idea, and got out. The sky was remarkably clear, and the surrounding land looked really beautiful. "Where are we?"   
  
"Indiana..." Merry was perched on the trunk, water bottle in hand and head leaning back on the rear windshield. "A wonderful little town called Normal."  
  
He blinked. "You're kidding."  
  
"Nope." Laurel giggled again. "Pop out the map if you want. We're in Normal, Indiana."  
  
He did. They were. "I can't believe there's a town called Normal," he grinned, feeling better than he had all day.  
  
"There's a town called Hell, Michigan, too," Amber shrugged and grinned. "And Intercourse, Pennsylvania..."  
  
"Which is right near Blue Balls..."  
  
Laurel doubled over with laughter and had to lean on the car. Dennis stared at Merry in disbelief. "Okay, I know about Intercourse, Pennsylvania, but ..."  
  
"No joke," she grinned. "Blue Balls, Pennsylvania. That whole area's got weird names like those. I don't know why. Must be something in the water."  
  
"What, Viagra?" Laurel had just regained her composure as he said that, and she burst into snorting peals of laughter again and had to sit down.  
  
"Oh goddess... you guys..." she took several deep breaths. "You guys are going to make me pee myself..."  
  
For some reason that sent Merry off into hysterical giggles. She had to set down her water bottle. Dennis snatched it up. "Hey, Laurel.. have a drink..." Merry rolled over to one side, laughing.  
  
Amber reached between the giggling gang as the pump nozzle clicked and set it back up on the gas pump, screwing in the cap. "You guys are nuts. I'm driving. I don't trust Merry to drive when she's laughing like that..."  
  
"I'm fine..." Merry protested, still having trouble breathing.  
  
"Yeah. And I'm the President of Burundi. In the car, girl." All three of them crowded in the backseat as Amber grabbed the keys and immediately started a round of 'he's touching meeeee' 'no, I'm not, you're on my side' 'moooooommmmmm!' It was the most fun Dennis had had in a long time.  
  
"Keep an eye out," Laurel said, though, after about fifteen minutes. Amber nodded tensely. "The sightings started here, and he's been up and down this stretch of highway. We don't know where he is right now..."  
  
Dennis stopped grinning almost immediately. He started to shiver, but pressed in between the two witches it was next to impossible to be as terrified as he had been the first time he'd encountered the ghost. Slowly, he started to settle down.  
  
"Anyone remember what he looks like?" Merry asked, nose stuck against the window. Then she was abruptly tossed sideways into Dennis as Amber slung the car around into the shoulder and slammed on the brakes.   
  
"Like that, maybe?"  
  
Dennis looked where Amber had pointed the car. The two witches on either side of him peered up and around the seats. He didn't see anything on the road, but he could see Amber white-knuckling the steering wheel and staring at what looked like a heat shimmer in front of them... and then it coalesced into a form. From the looks of everyone else in the car, they saw it too. Dennis swallowed through a dry throat.   
  
"So now what?" he said, and it came out raspy and breathless.   
  
"Now.." Amber swallowed. It was little comfort that the three witches seemed to be as terrified as he was. "Now we put him back where he belongs."  
  
Laurel, to Dennis' surprise, was the first one to set foot out of the car. She pulled out her .357 that, even as small as the revolver was, looked huge in her tiny hand. He concentrated for a second, frowning and squinting at her as he tried to flip his vision to the other plane that the women kept talking about. To his surprise, it was easier to do than it had been the first several times. She was taller in the astral or spectral plane (whichever it was), dressed in a trenchcoat... she looked older too. The sound of the other two getting out of the car distracted him for a second, but he managed to grab onto the vision before he lost it. Merry and Amber were similarly dressed. Amber was holding a shotgun, and he had to blink a lot before he realized that it was just a spectral manifestation.  
  
Down the road, the Juggernaugt dragged the body of some poor motorist. As he got out of the car, Dennis was revolted to see that it wasn't even a whole corpse. His vision swam, bile rose in his throat, and he took several deep breaths to get himself under control again.   
  
"Breaker Mahoney!" Amber called, her voice ringing loud and clear. "You're under arrest! Stand down, or be destroyed."  
  
He was pretty sure that wasn't what cops said.  
  
"You have the right to remain silent," Laurel said, starting to walk forward.   
  
Dennis found himself following. "Anything you say can and will be used against you..." Think cop, he thought to himself frantically. Think, cop. You're a cop. You're a cop, and you're going to arrest a dangerous serial killer. The words 'dangerous serial killer' stuck in his mind more than 'cop' did. "You have ... you have the right to an attorney..."   
  
The Juggernaut turned to face them.  
  
Everyone blanched. Merry turned first pale, then green. Dennis thought he was going to be sick again, and had to fight to remain in the 'cop' personal, to keep his vision where it was. His eyes were watering, but he didn't want to blink in case he lost the image. It helped, a little, that when he looked down he could see himself in the trenchcoat and uniform of a police detective. The 9mm sat in his hand and should have been comforting, but wasn't.   
  
"Stay back!"  
  
He looked up. The Juggernaut was advancing, and blind panic filled his mind. Laurel was backing up a step, two...   
  
"I'm warning you..."  
  
He didn't even think. Dennis raised his pistol and fired, two shots straight into the Juggernaut's torso, not thinking that blanks weren't likely to harm anyone, living or dead. He forgot for that instant that the Juggernaut was a ghost, and shouldn't have been able to hurt him. Breaker Mahoney jerked, and started to charge. Laurel squeaked and ran.  
  
"Laurel!" He ran after her, still not thinking, realizing only that if she kept running the Juggernaut would keep chasing her. Behind him Merry and Amber were firing their pistols at the ghost, pouring bullet after bullet into him. Dennis struggled with the terrified woman, trying to fire at the ghost and keep her from running away, possibly even into traffic. After a few seconds he managed to pick her up, holding her in front of him with one arm around her waist. Her arm shook, but she raised the gun, aimed, and fired.  
  
Breaker Mahoney twitched with each shot as though it was a live bullet that had actually struck him. He kept advancing, and they poured round after round into him. Just as Dennis was starting to wonder in panic what would happen when they had to reload, the Juggernaut screamed and crumpled to the ground, fading from sight. They all dropped their arms as one, guns suddenly heavy in their hands. He couldn't believe it had been that easy.  
  
"Let's go..." Amber said slowly, breathing hard as though she'd just run a marathon. "Before the cops show up and wonder what we're all doing on the side of the road firing blanks into thin air."  
  
They packed themselves into the car and pulled out just as the first sirens dopplared into their hearing. 


	3. The Jackal

A/N: Thank you, Magdalena Roth! This works so much better when I actually know where everyone is. :)  
  
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Sebastian Kane stared at the burned-out ruins of what once had been the Borehamwood Asylum. It had changed quite a bit since the turn of the century. Now it stood on what was ostensibly private land, a much-complained-about eyesore that the owner was forever saying he was going to tear down, one of these days. Sebastian wondered if the owner would be more or less enthusiastic if he knew there was a ghost living on the premises, attacking and quite possibly murdering women, young girls, and whatever poor homeless person ventured too close to the area. Normally he would have said more enthusiastic, but these days ghosts and haunted houses seemed to be all the rage; a large part of the teenage and young adult population was wandering around in black clothing, white makeup, and spouting poetry that would have made a 19th century consumptive sit up and smack them.   
  
He knew better. Tragedy was not something glamorous, ghosts were not curiosities to be fawned over, and the darker magics could kill. Sorcery had been in his bloodline for ten generations, and he had grown up intimate with the knowledge of the darker side of the world. His hand tightened around the crystal handle of his walking stick, remembering his own youth in a much more conservative and yet much darker time. That had been one good thing about Meredith's mother: she had been perfectly willing to keep the vast majority of his past from their child, allowing her to grow up without the burden of a family history that bordered on dynastic.   
  
Not that any of that mattered now. Well, perhaps it mattered a little. The family line he had turned his back on years ago had made it a point to marry only those with magical abilities themselves, whether latent or active. Meredith was quite possibly the most powerful witch in her age group in the region, perhaps in the country... at least, she would have been if she'd known. But Sebastian had seen what had happened to those who were given too much power as a matter of course, of heritage. He'd nearly been one of them himself. He wasn't about to allow his daughter to become that kind of monster.  
  
A flicker of movement caught out of the corner of his eye drew his attention back to the here and now. He took a couple slow, deliberate steps forward; step step tap. step step tap. The flicker appeared again, and he almost passed it off as a leaf blowing in the wind. Then he felt the wind of someone rushing at him, and just in time to duck low enough for the clawed fingernails to go raking through his hair.  
  
"Damn!"  
  
He stared at the Jackal with a look of mingled horror and disgust. No wonder the four children had come out of the house in such a wreck, if this was the average sort of ghost Kriticos had imprisoned. It gibbered and twitched at him as he held it at bay with the magics implanted in his walking stick. The crystal knob at the end glowed, lighting the clearing around him.  
  
"All right, then..." he murmured. "What am I going to do with you?"  
  
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"Oohhh Goddess, I could sleep for a week." Laurel moaned as she dragged herself back into the house. They were all feeling drained, having made the drive home only with the benefit of a bottle of No-Doz. Merry went straight into her room and curled up on the bottom bunk in her bed; Dennis would have been willing to bet that she had been asleep even before her head hit the pillow. He simply toppled directly over onto the couch, planting face into throw pillow and groaning. He hadn't felt this exhausted in... ever.  
  
"Why am I so tired?" he mumbled, not really expecting an answer.  
  
"Re-enacting a traumatic event on the spectral plane is enough of a hassle," Amber said, going straight into the kitchen and pouring herself a huge glass of orange juice. "Doing it and then staying up a good 6 hours after you should have gone to bed is a pain in the ass." She yawned hugely and then proceeded to drain the entire glass in three huge gulps. Dennis watched with wide-eyed bemusement.  
  
"You saw Merry downing all those Power Bars, right?" Laurel asked him, struggling with her shoelaces. She was so tired that it was taking her a couple of minutes to untie each shoe, with pauses in between to stare at them as though she was recalling just how to do it.  
  
"Yeah..." Dennis said slowly.  
  
"I can't believe she eats that crap. It tastes like cardboard."  
  
"But it's nutritious cardboard," Laurel pointed out wryly, finally getting her shoes unlaced and kicking them off halfway across the room. "She'll have less of a headache that way, when we wake up..."  
Another yawn cut her off.  
  
"That's not a bad idea..." Dennis tried to push himself up into a sitting position and then gave up, flopping back down. "I'm starving."  
  
Amber nodded, rummaging through the fridge till she found what looked like a bag of oranges, a loaf of bread and a packet of deli meats and cheeses. "Your body's exhausted. No more energy. Which means you need to sleep for a week and eat a whole cow. Only problem is figuring out which order to do it in."  
  
Laurel shrugged. "Magic is energy intensive work..." she yawned again, and then staggered to her feet. "Me, I'm going for the sleep first. I can't keep my eyes open any longer, and I'd probably fall asleep in mid chew." Amber started to giggle. "Yeah, you'd like that, falling asleep in my mayonnaise."   
  
"Damn straight."  
  
Laurel flipped her off and tottered into Merry's room. "Scoot over," she muttered, and Dennis heard Merry make some sort of sleep-noise in response before he saw Laurel almost fall over onto the bed, then stop. "Sonofa... guyyyys? I need your help with her."  
  
Amber, who seemed to have chosen food over sleep for the immediate future, stuck her head in. Dennis rolled himself off the couch and manage to achieve standing position. "What's up?"  
  
"She forgot to pull out the futon again..."   
  
Laurel was leaning up against one of the weirder beds Dennis had seen. It looked as though someone had taken a bunk bed and replaced the bottom bunk with a king-sized futon. The bottom bunk was currently folded up into couch position, and therefore took up very little space. Unfolded, it could probably have taken up a quarter of the remaining room space.   
  
"Hoo boy. Merry..." There was a muffled groan from the pillows. "Merry, get up. We need to pull out the futon."  
  
"Fugginel." She didn't so much get off the futon-couch as roll off of it, pulling herself upright on the bunk bed ladder and leaning against it. "You gedda do it," she muttered, looking blearily at Amber, who shrugged.   
  
"Fine by me... hey, Den... gimme a hand with this? Laurel looks like she's fallen asleep standing up."   
  
She did, too. Dennis chuckled as he leaned over and helped Amber pull out the bottom bunk. He'd been right, it did fill up just about a quarter of the available room space. Laurel immediately rolled into it, followed shortly by Merry. Amber stared at her friends, amused. "So what'll it be for you, sleep or food? Keeping in mind that Merry's father will probably wake us up sooner than we'd like and we'll have to go off after the next ghost."  
  
"Well, when you put it that way, I'd rather eat in a car than sleep in a car." Dennis grinned weakly. "And I think I'm more tired than hungry."  
  
She looked him up and down critically. "As skinny as you are, I'd think you'd be hungry all the time. Okay, crash down. I'll take the top bunk." Dennis blinked.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Better for all of us if you just crash in her room," she called over her shoulder. He blinked again.  
  
"What... why?"  
  
Amber turned and gave him a measuring look that made him shift uncomfortably and feel as though he'd failed some sort of test. Then she sighed. "I don't know all of what went on in the house... or the Ocularis, or whatever you want to call it. But I do know that you got up close and personal with at least one ghost, maybe more than one. If they're still loose, now that we've killed one of them, the others might know it. By the time Sebastian's done with the Jackal, they probably will. Once tied together, always tied together, at least on some level. And they won't like us banishing them, and a lot of those ghosts were sick, violent. So they'll be coming after us."  
  
Dennis swallowed hard. He hadn't thought of that. "And Merry's wards... shields... whatever are stronger than mine."  
  
Amber nodded. "You've been doing this for a few weeks. Merry's been doing this all her life. And all her life she's lived in this house, this room. Those protections are layered so thick the room's practically sound-proof. You'll be safer in there."  
  
"When you put it that way..." He paused. "Uh... shouldn't I get the top bunk?"  
  
She laughed. "Sometimes I forget how ... well, never mind. Den, you're all grown adults, and it's not like any of you has the energy to do anything. Trust me, it's fine. No one's going to think any less of you either way, but I'll probably have the energy to climb the ladder to the top bunk, and you look like you're about to pass out right now."  
  
"When you put it that way..." he repeated with a wry grin.   
  
"Now go to sleep."  
  
"Yes, mother," he laughed, and stretched out on the outermost edge of the bottom bunk. Amber disappeared through the doorway and came back a few moments later with an armful of blankets, tossing them haphazardly over the three.   
  
"Sleep well," she chuckled, and went back to the kitchen.   
  
Dennis stretched out and closed his eyes, still exhausted, but the strangeness of being in one big bed with two women was keeping him awake. He rolled over onto his side, watching both women sleep. Merry's darker brown hair stood out against Laurel's and moved slightly with the even breathing of deep sleep. Laurel had half-buried her head under a pillow and was snoring quietly. He found himself smiling.. weeks ago, he hadn't even imagined that he'd be alive now, much less curled up in a bed with two decidedly beautiful women. Not to mention charming, intelligent, and fun to be around. Good friends... when was the last time he'd had a friend? Too long. And the best part... they understood. They understood everything, the visions, the ghosts... and they accepted it. Amazing.   
  
He felt himself starting to drift off, a slight smile on his face. Just as he was about to fall asleep, Moon leapt up onto his side and padded into the bed, curling up with his head in the curve of Merry's hip.  
  
it's about time, the cat said cryptically.  
  
Dennis thought about asking what he was talking about, but by the time the thought had completely formulated he was asleep.  
  
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"Don't touch me!" the spectre said, even as it reached out to claw at Sebastian. He stepped back as he gestured forward with the staff, blocking the ghost from touching him. "Keep away!"  
  
"I won't touch you," Sebastian murmured, a faint note of pity creeping into his voice. "Unfortunately you don't seem to be willing to keep away from everyone else."  
  
"Get away from me..." the misshapen ghost whimpered and writhed abruptly, sinking into a heap on the ground and twitching as though it were suffering a grand mal siezure. Limbs twisted upon themselves in a hideous parody of the strait-jacket it once wore, which flickered in and out of vision. "Get away!"   
  
Reason first, he decided. There might be just enough sanity left in the creature, mingled with the right kind of delusion, to believe what he would tell it. "Ryan Kuhn," he began, not moving closer, speaking in a calm and even tone of voice: the kind of voice to talk jumpers down from bridges. "Do you know where you are?"  
  
"Get away..." it whispered from a supine position on the ground. "Get away..."  
  
"You are no longer in the asylum, Ryan Kuhn. You have not been in the asylum for centuries. The asylum is gone."  
  
"Get away!" it shouted, waving its arms. It stood up and started coming at him with talons extended. Sebastian backed up as quickly as he could. "Get away get away get away get away..." One talon brushed his arm and he gritted his teeth with the sudden pain. Blood began to well up. "Don't touch me!"  
  
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn," he almost shouted, and the spectre stopped in mid-advance. Sebastian froze where he was, too. "You have been dead for many, many years. There was a fire..." his voice was calm again, quiet. "Do you remember?"  
  
"Fire..." the manic eyes quieted for a second. "Fire! Hot! Burning..." the arms started to flail again. "Burning! Burning!"  
  
Sebastian sighed and stayed where he was, waiting for the convulsions to subside. The Jackal thrashed its caged head, feet kicking out from under him and sending him tumbling to the ground again, writhing in pain. Burns were starting to appear on the body now, angry and glowing and red. They appeared, welled up, and burst in rosettes of flame. It seemed to go on for hours, and Sebastian took the brief opportunity to clean up the cut on his arm in a handkerchief. Thankfully, it didn't look deep. Not for the first time, he was glad that he'd come out himself instead of sending the girls to deal with this ghost. If the Jackal had encountered three women, he might very well have done worse to them than just a scratch on the arm. An image of Meredith covered in bite wounds and claw marks flashed through his head, and he shuddered.  
  
"Ryan Kuhn..." he snapped out, but the spectre didn't pay any attention. He had to lash out with his staff, a small bolt of energy coruscating from the crystal at the end of the staff to the creature's chest. It arched backwards, screamed, and then fell still.   
  
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn. There is no more burning. There are no more doctors. Everyone is gone away." They're all dead too, he thought wryly, but didn't say it. He took a risk and kneeled down by the creature, the glowing crystal lighting his face in a way that would have made living men shiver had they seen it.  
  
It looked up at him as though finally seeing him for the first time, and did not shudder or quake. It blinked rheumy eyes at him through the bars of the cage around its head, and bared hideous teeth. "Gone away?"  
  
"All gone," Sebastian confirmed tiredly. "And now you can go, too."  
  
"Go home?"   
  
Sebastian suppressed a shudder. He didn't know where the ghost originally came from, but it surely remembered, and the last thing he wanted to do was to send it someplace more populated. It would probably go back to some place like New York City, too. Then again, one more horror would probably get lost in the shuffle, there. "No..." he racked his brain for a second, trying to think of how to approach the problem. "Go here." Inspiration struck, born of too many encounters with New Age teenyboppers, and he gestured at the slowly increasing light coming from the staff. "Into the light." Inwardly he winced at using such a hackneyed phrase that wasn't true anyway.   
  
"Into light..." the ghost reached forward, extending a taloned hand to touch the crystal. Sebastian watched it, eyes narrowed, hoping the ghost was enough of a Christian to have vague memories of concepts such as 'light of heaven.' He really didn't want to have to share his staff with the thing.  
  
The ghost began to dissipate into hundreds of tiny points of light, and Sebastian quashed a sigh of relief. He maintained the pose, smiling what he hoped was a kindly sort of smile. He watched the ghost realize its own demise and accede to the natural order of things, passing into the next world. Just before it disappeared entirely it turned its eyes back to him, smiling back with a face that made Sebastian want to vomit.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
And then it was gone.  
  
He made it a few steps, leaning heavily on his walking stick, before he had to lean up against a tree and catch his breath. Not only had that been nerve wracking, it had been sickening to boot. He waited a few minutes and then slowly made his way back to the car, straightening up a little as he recovered his strength. With any luck, by the time he got home the other four would have returned and rested, leaving them with only ten more ghosts to banish. Perhaps they would split into smaller groups next time. He wanted this over with. 


	4. The Pilgrimess

A/N: Okay, I'm not going to be able to keep up this generic romance much longer... either Dennis is going to start flirting with all three witches, or you guys are going to have to vote in your suggestions for which one he ends up with, or none. :)  
  
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The first thing Dennis noticed when he drifted back to consciousness again was that it was warm. Very warm. The second thing he noticed was that it was soft, and the third and fourth things were Laurel and Merry on either side of him. He'd've sat up suddenly if he'd been physically able.   
  
"Mrrph," Merry muttered sleepily, and snuggled further up to Dennis. The lanky psychic looked down at her, uncomfortable and at the same time shyly pleased to have her there.   
  
"It can't be time to wake up already," Laurel said into the pillows and Dennis' shoulder. Above them he heard Amber kick the wall, hard.  
  
"If you put a dent in my wall, I'm going to make you fix it," Merry mumbled, and turned her head. Suddenly Dennis was nose to very cute nose with her. "G'morning."  
  
"Good morning," he smiled shyly. He could get used to this. Merry smiled back, and there was a brief but panic-ridden moment when he thought she might kiss him. Then Laurel sat up behind him, narrowly missing the upper bunk with her head, and the moment passed. They both looked away, embarrassed.  
  
"How long have we been asleep?" Laurel stretched and yawned, leaning so far backwards that Dennis was surprised he didn't hear her back break.  
  
"About..." There was the sound of movement from above them while Amber hunted for her watch. "Jeez. Ten hours. Merry, is your father back yet?"  
  
"Mm-hmm..." Merry stretched and rolled out of the bunk bed, "He woke me up a few hours ago to let me know that he'd gotten back and he'd heard about the Juggernaught. And to tell me that he was going to let us sleep in," she added, grinning wryly as she leaned on her desk and watched everyone untangle themselves from the blankets.  
  
"He woke you up to tell you he was going to let you sleep in?"  
  
"It didn't make sense to me either," she shrugged ruefully.   
  
Dennis waited till Amber had staggered down the ladder before rolling out of the bottom bunk. "Does he have some sort of set agenda for which ghost we tackle next, or are we just pulling names out of a hat?" he asked, a bit hesitantly. His first banishment had gone eerily well, and he wasn't sure if that was typical of an exercise involving the witches or if they'd just gotten lucky. As intimidating as he was, Dennis would almost have preferred having Sebastian there. At least he knew the man was powerful and skilled and more than capable of handling just about anything Dennis could think up. The witches... he was still having problems thinking of the delicate-seeming young women tackling anything like the ghosts.   
  
Except for Amber. Amber, even half-awake, seemed ready to tackle anything.  
  
"I don't know..." Merry looked around Dennis as Laurel cracked her neck with an audible popping noise. "You keep doing that, and some day your head is going to twist right around."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Laurel muttered, not unkindly. "Go find your father."  
  
Merry did so, muttering about self-destructive habits as she left the room. Dennis shook his head and stretched, causing a number of his own joints to pop.  
  
"I heard that!" Merry's voice wafted in from the hallway.   
  
"That wasn't me!" Laurel said, about the same time as Dennis called out. "My fault!" He looked around the room, met Laurel and Amber's gazes, and they all snickered. Dennis stretched again, relaxing. It had been a long time since he'd felt this good, ghosts or no ghosts. In fact, he didn't think he'd ever felt this good. He was in a house that just radiated warmth and comfort, among friends and the closest thing he'd ever had to family. He was starting to learn his abilities better, to have a more solid knowledge base about what he could and couldn't do, and as a result was feeling much more confident. His life pre-Ocularis seemed almost like a far-off nightmare. He closed his eyes, leaned back and grinned at the feeling of the sun on his face. Life was definitely looking up.  
  
Behind him Laurel and Amber looked at each other and grinned.   
  
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"I think we can save Arthur's wife for last," Dennis volunteered when the discussion came up around the lunchtable. "Of all of them... I don't even really think she's still around. She looked pretty peaceful, there at the end."  
  
Sebastian nodded. "I would tend to agree with you, despite what Erik says. It might be worth talking to Kriticos and asking him if he has had any visitations lately, but I would doubt it."  
  
"Which leaves nine ghosts..." Merry bit her lip. "Most of which are nasty, violent, and dangerous in one way or another. Father, do you really think we can do this on our own? I'd much rather have Erik with us, or even Philip or Rosalind..." She paused and sighed as she saw her father slowly shake his head. "I know, I know. We found the problem, so it's our responsiblity to deal with it."  
  
"We are not spread so thickly over the country that we can pull all of them off of whatever they are doing to help us," he pointed out, "And I'm not entirely sure I can contact Erik or Rosalind, in any case. They have a tendency to wander from place to place without leaving any way for us to contact them. As you are well aware."  
  
Merry flushed. "So which ghost do we tackle next?" Amber interjected before anything else on that line could be said. "Or do we just start pulling names out of a hat?"  
  
Sebastian took a deep breath. He actually looked uncomfortable, a situation which was unusual enough to cause all three witches and Dennis to look at him oddly. "Actually... I was intending to recommend that you visit the Pilgrimess next. There are reasons..." He trailed off. Merry gave her father a look that clearly said she thought he had lost what few marbles he still had a death grip on. His gaze, however, had eventually fixed upon Laurel, who was now starting to look uncomfortable as well.  
  
"What reasons..." Laurel said slowly.   
  
"I took the liberty of studying the genealogy of Miss Isabella Smith, under the chance that she actually was of a witchcraft-inclined lineage. As you may know, she emigrated to the States with no family to speak of and never settled down or had any children before she was executed for poisoning and killing the village's cattle. But she did have family in England..."   
  
Laurel paled. Merry and Amber each leaned over and gripped a hand, staring at Sebastian.  
  
"... and yes, Laurel, she is your ancestress."  
  
Dennis could hear and count the seconds tick by on his watch. It was a full fifteen minutes till the silence was broken again by anything other than breathing and gasping.   
  
"Well, shit."  
  
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Dennis didn't think he'd ever seen the witches so fragile, so frail. After the banishment of the Juggernaut he felt almost invincible... but Laurel seemed on the verge of total collapse. Merry wasn't much better, and Amber was tense with holding both of them together. He didn't understand why. Well, no, that wasn't true. He understood a little, how the blood that Laurel and the Pilgrimess shared could give the ghost power over the woman if she wasn't careful, and if the ghost really had been a witch. But he didn't understand why they were so terrified of the confrontation. He'd seen them in action, he knew how capable they were. Didn't they know it, themselves? Maybe they didn't... he hadn't known, or hadn't believed at any rate, what he was capable of until very recently.   
  
He was driving them to the site of the hanging, which was (fortunately for them) in one of the more backwoods areas of New Jersey. They'd chosen midnight for their time of attack, but it had taken only one 'witching hour' joke to send Laurel into a fit of hysterical giggles, and then they were all silent. Merry was sitting next to him, with Amber in the back. The atmosphere was tense, thick, palpably muffled.   
  
"What are we going to do this time?" Dennis asked finally, speaking in low tones so as not to upset Laurel any more than she already was. They'd forced some valerian and chamomile tea down her throat an hour into the drive, and she was now sleeping fitfully in the back seat.   
  
"Probably just a simple banishing," Merry murmured back, her eyes closed. "With the blood tie, Laurel can theoretically just stand there, tell the Pilgrimess to go away, and she'll go."  
  
"Theoretically."  
  
Merry nodded. "If she's strong enough. Laurel's... well, she's grown up on stories like this. Almost exactly like this, there's always one witch or sorcerer or something in every other generation that becomes the bugbear in the closet. Be good or so-and-so will get you, that kind of thing. Great Uncle Moe, I don't know. Laurel's never really said much about them, but I also don't think she ever expected the monster under her bed to be real."  
  
Dennis winced. It explained a lot. "Well, but the Pilgrimess didn't hurt her when we were all in the house..."  
  
"I don't think she knew who Laurel was. Hopefully she still won't know. Because this time there aren't any warded walls to hide behind if the ghost gets nasty. We're going to have to pull something out of our butts."  
  
He grinned. "That's an interesting image..."  
  
"Oh, hush." It did provoke her into smiling, though, the first smile of the evening. Dennis felt a little surge of gratification.  
  
"We'll get through it," he said with more confidence than he felt. "I have faith in us."  
  
She glanced at him sideways a little. "You sure?"  
  
"Yeah..." he glanced back at her, paused at seeing her unease. "Come on, Merry. Look what you guys have done. For me, at least, just in the short time I've known you. You saved me and Arthur and his whole family from psychotic ghosts and sorcerers. You killed Cyrus, and he was one mean son of a bitch. You destroyed the Ocularis, destroyed all the notes. You took me on and taught me how to control all the weird stuff I can do. And if that's just same old day-in day-out stuff to you, well, it's something big to me. It's impressive. You guys are strong, you're smart, you're resourceful." He paused. The next few words were sticking in his throat.  
  
"You stick together. You're like family, and that means something. You've got each other's backs, and you know it. You trust each other. And I know it's a cliche, but that's really something powerful that no ghost is going to take from you. It's a big part of what makes you guys so strong. And I really think it's what's going to help you beat the ghosts... and whatever happens after that."  
  
Merry stared at him in silence for a little while. Her eyes glittered suspiciously, but there was a small, shy smile on her face. "Thanks..." she said finally, heartfelt. She turned to face front again. "Sometimes I think we forget that."  
  
"Well, don't," he grinned a little at her, and she glanced over and smiled back.  
  
"Yessir."  
  
"Yessir." "Yessir." Two echoes came from the back seat, and Laurel wearily poked her head through to the front. "Thanks, Dennis..." she murmured near his ear. "I needed that."  
  
"You going to be okay?"  
  
She looked haggard. She looked exhausted, like a stiff breeze would blow her over. "Yeah, I think so. Okay enough to do this, anyway."   
  
"I hope so..." Merry said, her voice more than a little strained. "'cause we're there."  
  
Everyone's heads whipped front, saw the ghost bent over in front of the car as Dennis drove right through her, moving too fast to stop. It looked almost like she had been gardening or something, but when the car drove through her with all for supernaturally-inclined people inside she turned and glared at it. Her jaw unhinged from her face as she screamed, and it seemed that the scream sent an icy wind through the car. Laurel's eyes widened, and she gave a little yelp as Dennis pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked.  
  
"Ohhh... Goddess...." she started to babble. Merry and Amber stumbled out of the car, Dennis remaining in the front seat. "Sweet Morrighan, Lady of Battles, protect me..."  
  
"It'll be okay," Dennis tried to reassure her, trying to return the favor from the house. "We're all here with you... it'll be okay."  
  
She threw him a grateful look and got out of the car after him.  
  
"I..." Laurel stammered, stepping forward between the two witches who were standing towards the trunk of the car. "Isabelle..."  
  
"It's okay..." Merry murmured, taking her coven-sister's hand. "You're going to be okay.. okay? You've got the three of us..."  
  
Dennis threw her a grateful look at being included in the group, and she gave him a return look of 'don't be a bloody idiot.' He stepped up behind Laurel, gently laying his hands on her shoulders and calming himself down, breathing the way the women had taught him, trying to focus his mind. The ghost wasn't having nearly as much of an effect on him as it was on Laurel, but it was still unnerving to see the creature again.   
  
Laurel reached up one hand to grip Dennis', the other remaind clasped in Merry's hand. Amber slid an arm around her friend's waist. She straightened, the strength that she was taking from everyone's presence almost visible as the lines of panic smoothed on her face. "Isabella Smith."  
  
The ghost looked up as its descendant addressed it and screamed again. This time the blast definitely went through all of them, freezing cold. Laurel rocked back a little into Dennis, who gently pushed her back up. "Isabella Smith of New Linconshire. You have strayed a very long ways away from your time. Go home."  
  
The ghost screamed. Somewhere in the noise a tone of 'says who' could be felt. Laurel's grip tightened.   
  
"I have spoken, and it will be so. You are out of your time and far from your home..."  
  
"... and dead..." Amber stuck in pertly.  
  
"... and dead," Laurel smiled, just a little. "You have no place here. Your time is up. Leave this place, and never return. I command you, by the stars and by the earth and by the blood in our veins..."  
  
Dennis knew that last part had been a mistake the second Merry hissed and grabbed Laurel's hand. From the look on Laurel's face, she had realized it only too late as well. The ghost leaned forward, almost as though it was tasting the air, and drifted very close to Laurel. The other three clustered around her as though they could shield her with her bodies. Laurel's face had gone pasty white, and Dennis actually thought she might faint. "Now what?" he murmured, uncertain.   
  
"Now..." Merry bit her lip.  
  
"Now we improvise..." Amber murmured, and for a second Dennis wasn't sure he'd seen her lips move. The Gabriel Hounds, she seemed to say, the ratchets, but he would have sworn it hadn't come from her mouth.  
  
Whatever the Ratchet Hounds were, Laurel seemed to get the hint. She straightened up and stared the ghost levelly in the eye, still shaking but more determined now. "Get you gone, Isabella Smith," she commanded. "You are past out of time."  
  
The ghost screamed and raked claws across the three witches' stomachs. Laurel screamed, too, and crumpled to the ground, although the claws seemed to have passed right through the other two.  
  
"Get back!" Amber drew her sword, a sword that Dennis vaguely recognized from the horrible night at the house, and he knew that hadn't been there a second ago. Merry crouched down by her coven-sister and sunk her hands in the bloody marks, healing her.   
  
"Annwn, Cwn Annwn..." Dennis heard Laurel mumble, but he couldn't tell if it was English, babbling, or some other language. "Help me... Cwn Annwn..." The ghost flickered back and forth in front of the three of them, held at bay by Amber and her sword. "Annwn, Cwn Annwn," he heard again, and "Isabella Smith," and the rest was in words that he didn't know. "Help me..." She passed out.  
  
Dennis looked down at Merry in alarm, but Merry was shaking her head. "She'll be all right... just... exhausted..." she seemed to be looking around for something. He was about to ask what she was looking for, but the ghost lunged past Amber and it was all the three of them could do to keep the ghost off of Laurel. It raked at Dennis, then at the other two again, claws still passing through them like numbing mist. "Cwn Annwn..." Merry was repeating now. "Cwn Annwn..."  
  
A loud growl interrupted Dennis as he was about to ask just what the hell they were talking about. He looked around, wondering where the next threat was coming from, until he noticed that the ghost witch was looking around in fright as well. The growling continued, growing softer and softer until he thought that whatever it was had almost gone. At least, he hoped it was gone. It didn't sound like anyone's dog that he'd ever heard, and for a second the images of the Hammer crushing him like a walnut flashed through his mind again. The car that had nearly hit him when he was fifteen, the serial killer who had killed the neighbor about his age. All the times he had narrowly escaped death. He closed his eyes after the last, faint growl had subsided, hoping that it was over. His arms wrapped around Merry and Laurel's shoulders, and he felt Merry's arm slip around his waist. They huddled together in the darkness, with Amber still holding the ghost at bay.   
  
The ghost's scream, no longer menacing but terrified, galvanized him into opening his eyes again. What he saw nearly made him scream as well.  
  
A mastiff stood next to the ghost, nearly four feet tall at the shoulder and pure white in coat, with ears that looked as though they had been dipped in blood. He'd never seen eyes that were so suited to the description of 'burning hellfires' before. The hound's teeth were bared, and he would have sworn that the saliva that dripped from the canines sizzled like acid when it hit the street.   
  
The spectral hound grabbed the ghost by the throat, shaking her like a rag doll. Amber lowered her sword, looking pale and sweaty but almost vindictive as she watched. She was the only other one watching; Laurel was still unconscious and Merry was tending feverishly to her. Dennis watched in shock and horror as the hound shook the ghost one last time, leaped high into the air over their heads, and was gone.   
  
They sat on the side of the road for almost five minutes before Laurel regained consciousness and anyone spoke again.  
  
"What the hell was that?" Dennis asked, rattled to his boots.  
  
"Appropriate epithet," Merry said wryly, supporting Laurel as they staggered over to the car. "The hounds of Annwn are also known as hellhounds. One of their duties is to escort people to the lands of the dead."  
  
"Escort?" He heard the pitch of his voice climb and forced himself to calm down. "What do you mean, escort?"  
  
"Like archangels, or harbingers... they take souls that have passed on to the realms of the dead." Laurel coughed, but no liquid came up, no blood.  
  
"Welcome back to the land of the conscious," Dennis grinned wryly at her, and she gave him a tired wink in return.   
  
"Sorry if I scared you guys..." she said, collapsing into the back seat with Merry. Amber just clambered into the driver's seat, and they arranged themselves more or less in order. "I figured, calling the hell hounds was easier than trying to fight my ancestress while Merry worked on me."  
  
"You're damn straight it was," Merry smiled. "You're a pain in the butt to take care of at the best of times."  
  
"I thought that honor went to Amber," Dennis said mildly, and got punched in the arm for it. "Ow."  
  
"The ratchets are sort of available to us through the pantheon we work through..." Amber continued where Laurel had left off. "We deal mostly in magics and spirits from the British Isles, and the Cwn Annwn are Welsh. Not precisely our purview, but it worked, for the most part. And a good thing, too. Laurel, what the hell were you thinking?" Fear was laced all through her voice, but there was anger there too. The tension in the car jumped.  
  
Dennis laid a hand on her arm as Laurel winced and sank further into the back seat. "Not now, okay?" he murmured. Amber sighed, and shrugged.   
  
"Okay." She took a deep breath. "Okay. Look, why don't you guys get some sleep... Merry, you too, if you think Laurel can spare you. We're damn well done for the night."  
  
"I'll keep an eye on her," Dennis murmured, twisting around in his seat to watch Laurel as she stretched out as much as she could in the back seat. Merry threw him a grateful look.  
  
"Thanks..." 


	5. The Angry Princess

A/N: Phew. This chapter is longer than the rest... I don't know why. Maybe it's the start of an ongoing trend. Many thanks to April for letting me borrow Daniel! And many apologies for taking so long... I'll try to be more prompt in the future...  
  
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Sebastian was somewhat more creative.  
  
"What in the name of the gods above, below, and the realms between were you thinking?" he roared as the three witches staggered in, supported or flanked by Dennis. "You were supposed to banish her quickly, before she could touch you."  
  
"Things got a little out of hand..." Merry said, calmly ignoring her father's frantic outbursts as she helped carry her friend in to the dining room. "Get the plastic sheeting, we don't want her bleeding all over the place and then have less unflappable people walking in here and seeing huge blood stains."  
  
"I'm all right," Laurel said wryly from between Amber and Merry. "Thanks for asking."  
  
"You damn well should be. If you'd managed to get yourself killed I would kill you myself..." Sebastian growled, and as hilarious as it sounded Dennis had the feeling it wasn't entirely an idle threat. "What exactly went wrong?"  
  
"Before or after we drove threw her?" Amber sighed. "She wasn't where she was supposed to be, and then Laurel panicked, and ... shit, Seb, we'd've been a lot better off if you hadn't told us she was Laurel's great-great-great-great-great-great grand-whatever."  
  
Sebastian heaved a sigh that was more growl than sigh, but didn't say anything. He went off to get the plastic sheeting and spread it over the couch without a word. Laurel groaned as she was laid down on it, but for the most part the room was so silent that Dennis was growing more and more uneasy. It felt like a funeral home, like Laurel was already dead. He didn't like that feeling.  
  
"Damn, girl... you've got cloth all through the wounds..." Amber muttered. It sounded loud in the silence.  
  
"Not my fault," Laurel made a face at the other two women, and they all smiled. Then her eyes closed and her body seemed to relax. It looked as though she'd stopped breathing.  
  
"What happened?" Dennis asked nervously. No one answered. "Merry?"  
  
"She's asleep..." Merry took a deep breath and finally stepped back from the couch. "Actually, she's tranced. It makes it easier for us to heal her." Laurel had disappeared into the other room while Merry was talking, and now returned with a pair of quartz crystals larger than Dennis had ever seen, spear point crystals as big as Merry's tiny wrist.   
  
"While you're doing that, I don't suppose I can fill you in on what's been happening elsewhere?" Dennis looked around at Sebastian, who was standing in the doorway leaning on his cane and looking intimidating. He didn't sound sarcastic, though, he sounded tired. Dennis looked from Merry to her father, feeling out of his depth despite the time he had spent around the family.   
  
"Go right ahead..." Merry's voice held no rancor, no rebuke. Was this what it was like in so-called magical families?  
  
"We're going to have to split up, take them on singly, or in pairs at most. The spectral activity's escalated in the last few days, and we can't allow any more deaths. By the time we banish the next one, most of the ghosts will have already at least tasted their first kill, much less ..." he trailed off, shrugging one shoulder slightly. If Dennis hadn't known better he would have said the man looked defeated.  
  
"Can we get Erik in on it now?" Amber groused. Dennis looked back at her; she and Merry were running the crystals over Laurel's wounds, almost like some sort of Star Trek device. They weren't noticeably closing, though.   
  
"I don't know. I've put in a message for him and, surprisingly enough, John stopped by while you four were gone."  
  
Merry nodded approvingly. "John's more likely than any of us to be able to find Erik, at this point anyway."  
  
"Well, yes. But we shouldn't count on his help. And we can't in good conscience ask anyone else in on this fiasco..."  
  
"So it's up to us..." Dennis interjected.   
  
All three of them stared at him. Up until recently he had been reluctant to put himself forward in anything magical, reluctant to do anything that might induce the raging migraines that had become a way of life for him before the three witches and their sorcerer father. He shifted uncomfortably; he was still reluctant to do anything that might cause more headaches, or kill him like he'd seen in the vision in the sorcerer's house.   
  
But there he was, standing there staring at the gaping, bloody gashes in Laurel's body. Her chest didn't rise or fall, she didn't look alive. And he could so easily imagine the same wounds in Amber's body... or worse, Merry's. The thought made his chest and throat tighten. He swallowed anyway, and took a couple of deep breaths. They were still staring at him.   
  
"What?"  
  
Merry reached out with her free hand, moving the crystal lightly over Laurel's body again. "Dennis, are you sure you want to do this? Solo, I mean?"  
  
His next breath rattled in his chest. "No..." Sebastian was staring at him as though his next answer would matter more than anything he'd said in the older man's presence. "No, I'm not sure I want to do this Solo... actually, I'm sure I don't want to do this. I don't even know if I want anything to do with anything magic ever again."  
  
Merry looked down.  
  
"But... on the other hand, I can't really go through the rest of my life with these splitting headaches. I can't spend the rest of my life hiding from what I am. I have to learn how to deal with this sometime, and you guys aren't always going to be there for me." He laughed. It was bitter, more so than anything they had heard out of him before, and it showed in their faces. "I learned that lesson a long, long time ago."  
  
Merry squeezed his hand tightly.  
  
Sebastian coughed, a small, attention-getting noise. "Well. We have a number of ghosts left to tackle. Who would be best suited to which?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Well, don't everybody jump up at once," Dennis tried to lighten the tension with some humor, interrupted by the banging on the door. Everyone jumped, and Laurel's eyes flew open.  
  
"What the hell was that?" Amber whispered.  
  
"The door..." Sebastian said. His voice was ironic and amused but no less tense. "I'll get it."  
  
"Father..." Merry started to sit up, but her father's outstretched hand forestalled her.  
  
"Stay with Laurel."  
  
She exchanged a hesitant, nervous look with Dennis.  
  
"Laurel!"  
  
Pounding, smaller feet preceded Sebastian into the living room. Anna and Jenna circled around their sister, then around Amber, Merry, and Dennis. They didn't stop moving until they'd skidded and nearly slammed into each other, ending up directly in front of Sebastian again. The three witches and Sebastian, used to this behavior, sighed. Dennis just stared.   
  
"We heard that you..."  
  
"... needed help, so we figured..."  
  
"... we could join in and..."  
  
"... help out?"  
  
Laurel chuckled, sliding off the couch and kneeling down and stretching her arms out for a hug. They promptly dived into her arms, flickering back to ordinary young twins from the eerie girls Dennis saw occasionally. Although he was slowly getting control over what Merry called his 'Gift', he was still debating whether or not it was more like a curse. These girls made it seem more on the detrimental side of things. "Sure..." Laurel said, either oblivious to or disregarding the fact that she was talking to two girls who hadn't even made it to high school yet.   
  
"All right," Sebastian said calmly, and Dennis looked over at him. The older man shook his head slightly: left, right, back to center. Translation: Not now, explanations later. Dennis could live with that. "With your help it'll make things a bit easier..."  
  
"You're all..."  
  
"... bloody."   
  
Dennis tried to shut the twins out and listen only to Sebastian. It was difficult, as he felt little twinges of guilt each time the twins poked and prodded Laurel's wounds.   
  
"We have nine ghosts left to deal with... eight, really, considering Kriticos isn't likely to be much of a problem. If we each take one, that leaves three left to deal with by the time we're done. Dennis..." he turned to the younger man, who swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "Do you think you can take on the Angry Princess by yourself? Of all of them she's the least likely to be any trouble to you."  
  
Dennis nodded slowly, thinking fast. Of what he remembered of the Angry Princess, she was... had been... a depressed young woman in her late teens who had slashed herself out of a twisted need to be beautiful and then committed suicide. He would be able to deal with that, better than crazed ancestresses or dead convicts. He hoped. And he nodded.  
  
"Good. Laurel, I'm going to give you the First Born Son... if anyone can talk some sense into the kid, you can. Besides, he's not likely to be much of a threat..." his gray eyes flickered, and for a second Dennis caught a glimpse of the pain and stark fear Laurel's bloody entrance had caused. "And you can't handle much of a threat in this condition, not now. Merry, you're going to get the Bound Woman, Amber, you tackle the Torn Prince. Anna, Jenna, do you think you two can handle the Torso?"   
  
The two girls nodded solemnly, and it struck Dennis yet again how well Sebastian managed them all. He had, by process of elimination, given the youngest members of their mishmash family the least threatening ghost of all, although perhaps not necessarily the least frightening.   
  
"I will attempt the Great Child and the Dire Mother..."  
  
Merry caught her breath.  
  
"... and we should all leave as soon as possible."  
  
"Tomorrow morning," Laurel said, exchanging a glance with Dennis that conveyed volumes. The twins had gone on to chatter at Amber, and Merry was distracted with her father. He suspected that none of them heard her voice in his head. Merry's worried, and she might be right, but I think Sebastian can handle himself. Dennis nodded, not trusting himself to telepathy right now. "Tomorrow morning," she repeated, "Right now I think we all need some sleep. I'll get the twins home..."  
  
Sebastian nodded, passing a hand over his eyes, suddenly looking very tired and every day of his hundred plus years. "All right. All right, look... go to bed. All of you. We have enough work to do tomorrow. And don't look at the clock," he caught Dennis in the middle of turning his head. "You'll just get even more tired."  
  
He disappeared into his rooms.  
  
Laurel stood, shakily, but somehow she looked much better than she had even a few minutes ago. He stared suspiciously at the twins, who looked more tired than they should have. For that matter, what kind of... his brain stopped in the middle of asking himself why two thirteen year old girls were over at their cousin's house at... some ugly hour of the night. Magical families. He shook his head.  
  
"I'll get them back home," Laurel murmured, even as Amber staggered into Merry's room. "You three ... well, two. Get some sleep."  
  
Merry chuckled, yawning. Through the open door Amber's feet could be seen dangling off the upper bunk. "Not a bad idea. You going to be okay to drive?"  
  
"We'll make sure..."  
  
"... she gets home safe."  
  
Dennis shook his head and tottered into Merry's room. Then he stopped in mid stride as he realized what Amber had so neatly done. He could swear she wasn't snoring, but snickering in her sleep.  
  
"Goddess, tomorrow's going to be exhausting..." Merry yawned, flopping onto the futon bunk and kicking her shoes towards the back of the room. She closed her eyes, her breathing starting to even out into sleep. Dennis watched, caught. "You really should get some sleep, you know."  
  
He blinked. He had no idea how long he'd been staring. She had opened her eyes at some point... had he fallen asleep while standing there? "Right..."  
  
Pause. He made no move towards the bed, which made her smile and roll over onto her side after the first minute or so. "You can crash on the bed, you know. I won't bite. And you probably wouldn't make it up the stairs anyway."  
  
"Sure I..." he turned around, and somehow found himself facing the inside of the room again and leaning on the door. Sleep really did make one dizzy. "Oh."  
  
"Come on, Dennis. I won't bite, and you need the sleep. We all need the sleep. If we're going to get anything done tomorrow." Her words were punctuated by yawns, and she was clearly falling asleep even as she tried to talk to him.   
  
It was that more than anything else that drew him to sit by her on the bed, lean up against the wall and watch her curl up against the pillows. She was asleep within minutes, her breath softly blowing the few strands of hair that fell over her face, head tucked on her hands. He brushed her hair back from her face, watching the movements as though they belonged to someone else. Her hair was almost silken, and smelled of berries and lavender. It seemed to curl around his fingers and tug him down into sleep, a restful sleep that was blessedly free of dreams.  
  
-  
  
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The first sensation he registered when he woke up was warmth... all around him, and not just the warmth of being tucked up under too many covers. The second thing he noticed was softness, smooth skin, and the scent of raspberries and lavender. He pried his eyes open, squinting against the sunlight that crept unbidden into the room and seemed determined to blind them all.   
  
Merry was curled up against him, head pillowed on his chest, arms around his waist, snuggled up somehow in her sleep. He wasn't sure which was more astonishing, that she had relaxed into his arms (into his arms? oh boy...) in the middle of the night or that he hadn't gone into migraine-inducing visions when she had. Even now he couldn't feel them threatening, and while physical contact with the Kane clan, living in the same house with them was probably as relaxing as a normal life for him was going to get, he had never felt this sense of peace before. It was blissfully relaxing...  
  
And very distracting. He forced himself to get up, carefully swinging his legs over the side of the bed and ducking under the top bunk, letting Merry down gently so she didn't wake up. It was a futile effort, as it turned out.   
  
"Time to get going?" she yawned. He nodded, wondering if he should say anything. "I'll drop you off at the school... There'll be someone there to meet you, Sebastian's arranged it." She frowned. "I don't think he actually slept."  
  
Dennis hugged her suddenly, wanting to erase that worried frown, that look of fear in her eyes. "He'll be okay. He's been at this how long?"  
  
She smiled a little. "Longer that all four of us put together, that's for sure. I know... it's just... I don't know. I wish he'd take better care of himself sometimes."  
  
He didn't know what to say to that. He felt a sudden urge to kiss her forehead, stroke her hair, something. "He'll be okay. We all will." It was more confidence than he felt, but ...  
  
"Are you going to be okay with this? Flying solo?" She looked up at him, and Dennis winced, almost wishing she hadn't asked. He still wasn't sure what had possessed him to volunteer, but... Laurel's bloody gashes flashed in his mind's eye again, along with desperate visions of the future? The past? He didn't know. Bloody women in Victorian dresses, bloody bodies of Merry and the twins. He staggered backwards a step, clutching his forehead. "Dennis?"   
  
Her hands overlaid his, and the world went away. At least the bad parts of it did. Suddenly everything was muted. "I'm okay..." he took a deep breath, fighting down nausea. "I'm okay. I'm okay."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
No. I just had a splitting headache. I just had a vision of you dead, the twins dead, everyone dead. Everyone, everything I touch is dead, or ends up that way. "Yeah."  
  
She touched his cheek, and he looked down to see her smiling shyly. It caught his heart, and the world fogged around the edges again. "Okay," she murmured, blushing for no apparent reason. As though in return he blushed, too.   
  
"Are you ready for this?" He didn't want her to go. He didn't want any of them to go. But they were so much better than he was. They could handle themselves. He hoped.  
  
"As ready as we're going to be. It'll be fine, Dennis. Trust me?" she smiled, and he had to smile back.  
  
"I trust you."  
  
-  
  
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It's those damn ghosts I don't trust.  
  
Dennis sighed, staring at the empty school yard and fighting back a thousand unhappy memories of his own childhood. Afternoons spent hiding from ordinary childhood bullies on the playground, not because he was particularly geeky or bookish (although he had been) but because he didn't want them to touch him, didn't want their violence in his head. Afternoons spent dodging the physical blows and the psychic assault. Teachers who didn't understand why he didn't want their would-be comfort, their hugs and their touches. Counselors who didn't understand why he knew what he knew, or understood what he did. Adults who had stared, cringed, or yelled at him when he blurted out what he knew, before he learned to sit still and keep his damn mouth shut. Kids who instinctively sensed someone in their midst who would always be an outsider and kept away.   
  
He had really hated school. From elementary up through high school it had all been one never-ending cycle of ostracism, violence, counselors, parental yelling, and eventually silence and then more ostracism. Summer holidays had been the only brief respite, especially when he had found that one blissful job working in the library reshelving books. Books were good. Books didn't have memories, and the spirits that attached themselves to libraries didn't usually have any issues they wanted to share.  
  
Dennis stood there for another few minutes, trying to work up the courage to go in. It wasn't, he was starting to realize, all the ghost, or even mostly the ghost that was making him nervous. It was the memories of all those hellish days spent in an institution where no one understood him or even cared enough to make the effort. Eighteen years of memories, just about. He held back a shudder.  
  
And then he nearly screamed as a figure passed by a window. Nearly, because he also nearly bit his tongue off when he jumped. The figure paused at the edge, then moved back into the light where he could see it was (probably) the teacher Sebastian had arranged to be there to let him in. Thank god for small favors, at least the teacher didn't look dead. He walked up to the door, which the teacher was pushing open.   
  
"Hey... you must be Dennis."   
  
The man was ordinary looking enough at least, and only a little older than Dennis, or at least he looked it. He put his hand out to shake and Dennis tried very hard not to stare at him as though he were a poisonous snake.   
  
"I don't do handshakes..." he said finally. "It's a... ghost ... kind of... thing."  
  
Pause. "If you're a ghost, why do I have to open up the school for you?" It wasn't accusatory, just curious. Dennis wondered what kind of teacher took the presence of ghosts in stride.   
  
"Oh, no, I'm not a ghost. I just see them. Too much." He hesitated, not sure how to say it. Merry, Sebastian, Amber... they had all recommended just to come out and say it to people who would believe him, other people who also had to deal with magic and ghosts and the supernatural in their lives. Was the teacher one of them? "I get this... psychometric... thing. When I touch people."  
  
"Oh." The teacher looked torn between believing Dennis and believing a lifetime of indoctrination that ghosts and goblins and things that went bump in the night, didn't. He shrugged and gestured Dennis in. "Okay." Pause. "That can't be fun."  
  
"It's no picnic..." Dennis relaxed a little. "I'm Dennis Rafkin."  
  
"Daniel. Daniel Jameson." He smiled a little, gestured Dennis down the hall. "And the ghost is this way."  
  
Dennis froze. "You know about the ghost?"  
  
"Yeah... I'm the one that... called it in, I guess." He shrugged, and for a second Dennis wondered whether the teacher was really older than him as the man hunched over looking like a child waiting to be beaten. "I wasn't sure what it was at first, but the girls started to ... get strange, I guess. Stranger than usual, more depressed than usual."  
  
Dennis thought back to what he knew of the Angry Princess. "Not surprising. The ghost's a teenaged girl who committed suicide, so she's probably affecting anyone who comes near her." They neared the bathroom, and Daniel pushed the door open.   
  
"Teenage girl?" Daniel asked curiously.  
  
Dennis nodded, looking around absently. It didn't look like she was here, which was a bit of a relief. On the other hand, it meant he had to get her here as well as banish her, which... well, he wasn't sure how to go about doing that. There were bloodstains on the wall, residue from her presence, but she was probably off roaming the halls of the school.  
  
"Here..." Dennis slung his backpack off his shoulder, pulled out the couple pairs of glasses he'd snatched from the wreckage of Cyrus' house. He winced a little as he did so... no one in the household knew he had them, not even the witches. At least he thought they didn't. But sometimes he felt like he needed the crutch, and even if he didn't, Daniel couldn't see the ghost. He didn't really know why it was important that he show the ghost to the teacher. "Put these on."  
  
Daniel did, then gave a high pitched sort of squeak as he looked around and seemed to skid on a pool of blood. "What is that?" he yelped.  
  
Dennis blinked a little at the absurdity of it all, finding himself more calm than the person he was helping. "Blood. She cuts herself..."  
  
Daniel stared at him. "Poor girl..."  
  
Dennis blinked. There was a moment of brief empathy, a shared sensation of being outside everyone else, watching everyone else, and being unable to do anything about anything, being so far out of control and out of their depth.   
  
As if to add to the sudden camaraderie they both jumped, shrieking, as the ghost walked through the wall with her knife. Dennis nearly skidded... on the floor, on a pool of blood, he couldn't have said which. Instinctively, he clutched and whatever was handy to keep him upright, which happened to be Daniel's shoulder. Memories flashed through his brain, strict parents telling him that everything he saw and felt was a lie, solace at the piano, curling up and trying to hide in the smallest patch of light from a house that was otherwise entirely dark, going out of his way to avoid shadows. Fear overwhelmed him, and he fought it back. Someone else's fear, he reminded himself. Keep it out.   
  
The girl watched them, abstracted and interested in a distant sort of way.   
  
"I hate it when that happens," Dennis muttered. Daniel, who was leaning up against a bathroom door and hyperventilating, could only nod.  
  
"Do you always do that when you touch someone?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the ghost.  
  
"Almost," Dennis murmured, also staring. The girl ghost seemed to fidget, uncomfortable with the scrutiny.  
  
"Hey," Daniel said suddenly, making Dennis jump a little. "I'm Daniel, this is Dennis. Welcome to high school. Again." He smiled a little. Dennis thought briefly of Merry, of the same disarming, quiet shyness.   
  
The girl ghost just stared at them, albeit with less hostility than she'd shown in the glass house.  
  
"I guess you've already been around high schools before... so you already probably have seen everything there is to see. They're not much different..." Daniel laughed, high and nervous. He looked more scared than Dennis, which was a minor miracle. Dennis felt like he'd swallowed live goldfish.  
  
"How are you doing?" he finally managed to ask. The girl looked at him with definite recognition and what he suspected was outright hatred. Not that he could blame her. In a way... in the only way that mattered, Kalina (that bitch) had been right. It had been his fault. "Better?"  
  
"It's not much of a school," Daniel shrugged, "But it's what we've got. Pretty much like every other school you might have been to. Um..." He fidgeted. "So, are you doing okay?"  
  
"I'm sorry about what happened..." Dennis murmured, trying to shut out everything but the task at hand. "I never meant... I didn't..." He sighed. He'd known exactly what he was doing. "I was desperate. And Cyrus was the only person who would actually talk to me like I was a person... at least, he acted like it." He laughed, bitter and abrasive. Daniel stared at him as though he was the ghost then, oddly, turned back to the Angry Princess.  
  
"Everyone needs somewhere to belong, someone to talk to. Human beings are social creatures, but we're also very vicious. Those of us who get left on the outside... get hurt. And it's almost worse when we hurt each other."  
  
Dennis winced. "Yeah."  
  
The ghost girl screamed. She looked angry.  
  
"There's no excuse for what I did to you. I know that... now. I've had... new teachers, I guess. Friends ... friends who know what it's like on the outside. Daniel's right, we shouldn't turn on each other ... like we do. I guess..." he paused.  
  
Daniel and the girl stared at him.  
  
"I guess it seems like there's not enough people... not enough affection to go around, it starts turning into a feeding frenzy. And the second any of us gets out it's like chum in the waters."  
  
The girl mouthed the word 'chum' and actually started to giggle soundlessly. It was creepy.   
  
"I don't have any answers... I always used to want answers, until I found out how hard they were to get. There's no excuse, no reason for what kids do to each other..."  
  
"Even adults," Daniel said quietly. "You should see a parent social function. It's like an exquisitely staged fighting ring."  
  
Dennis stared at the ground, not even looking at the girl anymore. "People keep saying how kids are so innocent. Kids aren't innocent. Not when they can rip each other to shreds like they do. It's just sick, and it's demented... and parents teach it to their kids, which is worse. So we all end up at each other's throats, and if you're not vicious enough to survive you get shoved to the bottom of the heap where you're curled up with your hands over your head to keep from getting hit..." he was babbling. He was laughing. Hysterical. "They keep saying it's a jungle out there, oh, they have no idea. It's a war out there, and ..."  
  
Daniel stared at him, a little horror, a lot of sympathy. The peaceful calm of the morning seemed very far away. Even the ghost girl was looking at him with pity right now. Dennis straightened up, ran his fingers through his hair nervously, pushing it back from his forehead. "I don't know how to help you, kid," he admitted, sighing. "I wish I did. I just... I have no idea what I'm doing. These people I'm with now, they're trying to help me, but... I wish I knew if it was working. And I wish I knew... I don't know. That it was going to last. That they're not going to turn out to be a band of psychos like everyone else seems to be."  
  
"They sent you out here by yourself. Sounds to me like they trust you, think you're capable of handling yourself pretty good. Sebastian said he had confidence in you." The ghost girl looked from Daniel to Dennis, thoughtful.  
  
"I guess. I just wish I had some confidence in me. I still don't know how they manage to do it all... Laurel takes huge sucking chest wounds and keeps going, Merry somehow manages to handle both women and her father and the twins without stopping for breath, Amber... she can take on anything and keep fighting, she's not scared of anything. And Sebastian... he's ... I don't know. He's survived more than I ever want to go through, and ..."   
  
The ghost girl was standing right in front of him, staring up at him with an expression he didn't know how to read.  
  
"And you think you can't measure up? That you're not as good as they are?"  
  
He nodded wordlessly. Didn't want to admit it. Didn't want to think about it.   
  
"But you're here, aren't you? You're doing what has to be done. Lots of people don't."  
  
"Yeah, so that makes me some kind of hero for doing what I'm supposed to do?" He knew he sounded petulant, and he didn't care. It galled even more because he was starting to realize that, here he was, supposed to banish a ghost, and he couldn't even do that.  
  
"Sure. Especially with what you've been given. Like you said, kids don't tolerate other kids who are different, who don't conform to the very narrow standards. Most of those kids ... don't survive, in one way or another." Daniel winced at saying so near the ghost of someone who obviously 'hadn't survived.' "Grow up even more vicious than the people they grew up around, or suffering from clinical depression... or worse. Kids that grow up to be spree killers, drug addicts. It's a minor miracle anyone survives in one piece, much less finds any place they can really call home..."  
  
Dennis shrugged, self-conscious. "Yeah, but that's just Merry... and Amber, and Laurel, and..."  
  
"No, that's also you being willing to accept their help. A lot of people won't do that. You're trying to make up for what you've done, you're trying to pull your life back together. You're trying to fix your problems." There was a strange note in his voice, and he was wrapping his arms around his shoulders like he was cold. "In some ways that makes you stronger than any of them."  
  
Dennis looked at Daniel, and then at the ghost girl. She was, strangely, smiling. Nodding. Most of her cuts, the deep gashes on her arms and chest and legs, were closing up, and her body was becoming a more natural color.   
  
"I'm sorry... for what I did," Dennis sighed, staring at her, unconsciously mimicking Daniel's withdrawn and self-deprecating posture. "I wish I knew how to help you. I guess... I don't know. I just don't know what to do. From where I stand, it looks like your problems are over." It sounded bitter and hostile, even to him.  
  
The ghost girl touched his cheek, smiling. Her fingers passed right on through his face, which was unnerving, but it was almost worth it for the feeling of apology and forgiveness that came with the spectral touch. She looked over at Daniel, thoughtfulness and sympathy, and smiled at him too. Her hands reached out to both of them as though she wanted to hug them, and she slowly disappeared.  
  
Daniel stared at the spot where she'd been, startled and a little scared. "What was that?"  
  
"I think," Dennis said slowly, "That was ghost-speak for keep up the good work."  
  
They looked at each other, grinned a little, shook themselves. Suddenly the day seemed much less gloomy. Dennis could breath again, could think without the mind-numbing despair.   
  
"You think she's gone for good."  
  
He looked around. Even the bathroom looked brighter, and there was no trace of the blood that had stained the walls. "I think she's gone... I think she's finally come to terms with what happened to her... thanks." He tucked both pairs of glasses into his backpack. "And thanks for your help. Really... you've got a talent for this kind of thing." And where the hell were you when I was growing up, he wanted to ask, but he knew the answer to that one. Daniel Jameson would have been a classmate when Dennis was growing up, not a teacher.   
  
Daniel flushed slightly and looked down. "I guess. There's some kids like her in some of my classes. I just wish it came as easily with them as it did today..."   
  
They walked out of the school together, thinking. About what they could do, about the potential futility of their efforts. "Look, keep in touch, okay?" Dennis said finally as he flagged down a cab. "I know it's none of my business, but I think you could really use some of what they can do. I think..." There was no way to say it without sounding arrogant. "I really think you could use the help. With some of the... weirder stuff."  
  
Daniel didn't look offended; quite to the contrary, he looked thoughtful. "I'll keep it in mind..." he nodded, stepping back as Dennis got into the cab. "Good luck."  
  
"Thanks..." Dennis grinned wryly. "I think we're going to need it." 


	6. The Bound Woman

Merry parked the car in the (thankfully largely empty) school parking lot and stared at the buildings, thoughtful and more than a little worried. She was thinking about how long it had been since she'd been to high school, wondering what her friends from way back then were up to now. She was wondering what high school was like these days, if it was anything like high school was when she was in. She was thinking about anything but what she'd have to get out of her car and do in a few minutes.  
  
Her fingertips brushed her lips, she blushed a little, as she thought about what had happened between her and Dennis not so long ago. She had wanted very badly to kiss him, but hadn't been sure how he would take it. For that matter, she wasn't sure how she'd handle it if he kissed her. She had to have been incredibly obvious about this crush (was that really the right word?) she had on the man... but neither Amber, Laurel, nor her father had commented on it. Not that they would. But...   
  
She shook her head, sighed. It was all procrastination, and she knew it. In a few minutes she would have to get out of the car and go face the ghost, and this was one she probably couldn't talk down. Hell, most of the rest of them... they'd gotten rid of all the easy ones first. Subconsciously trying to work their way up to the hard ones, maybe... or maybe just hoping that someone else would take care of it.  
  
Merry bit her lip and slouched down further in the driver's seat. The problem, really, was that there was no one else. Sorcerers, witches, magicians, priests, psychics, whichever. There weren't enough people out there who dealt with the so-called paranormal that they could just pass off the less-than-choice assignments whenever they felt like it. In her world it was generally a 'you found it so you get to deal with it' type situation. The only exceptions were when the problem was well, truly, and clearly out of the range of the person who had discovered the problem, and then backup could be called in. That was not the case here, however much she wanted to admit it. She was more than capable of dealing with a single ghost by herself. Just... perhaps not necessarily able to do it and emerge unscathed.   
  
Slowly, hyper-aware of her movements, she pulled the keys out and clipped them to the belt-loop of her jeans. She grabbed her backpack from the seat next to her and slung it over her shoulder as she opened the door and set foot to pavement. She stood up and closed the door behind her, then moved to the trunk and sat on it to check the contents of her backpack. Raven's wing, sacred sage, crystal in case she needed to heal herself. Mirror, in case she needed to call her father for help, or in case she needed to call home. Totem of Annwn, pendant... more for good luck than anything else. She'd worn it ever since she was a little girl, ever since she could remember... she suspected it had been her mother's, but had never actually been told. All she remembered about it was that it would keep her safe, and there was so much of that belief imbued in the pendant by now that it probably actually did.  
  
Black-handled knife, rowan wand that was really more of a stick, holy water blessed in all the proper ways from the spring behind her house, small shaker of salt. Power bars, bottled water for drinking, bandages and bactine and cell phone in case she needed to call the more mundane authorities. She was about as ready as she was going to be.  
  
With a deep breath and one last check to make sure everything was in her backpack, Merry started towards the school. She wasn't sure if it was going to make things worse, or if it really didn't matter that she didn't know where the ghost would be. She'd declined the use of the glasses from the Kriticos house... machine... whatever the hell it was... preferring instead to use her own sight. If nothing else, she could drop right out of the spirit world without having to get the glasses off, which might mean the difference between life and death for her, or at least a smooth trip home versus a ride in an ambulance. But as she swung her head from side to side, remembering those long ago hunting trips in the woods, she didn't see any sign of the ghost.  
  
Damn.  
  
"Can I help you, miss?"   
  
Merry screamed, jumped about a foot in the air, and came down on a wet patch of linoleum. She nearly fell backwards into the lockers, would have hit her head if it hadn't been for the well-meaning janitor. He was, she noted with the abstracted mind of someone who was far too much on edge, dressed in the Freddy Kreuger red-and-green sweater. She wondered if that was a bad omen.  
  
"Sorry..." she took a deep breath. "Sorry. Scary movie marathon last night, still a little too keyed up." She gave the man what she hoped was a charming smile and shook his hand. "My name is Meredith Kane... I'm the debunker the school asked for?"  
  
The janitor looked puzzled.  
  
"The principal..." Damn, what was the man's name. "Mr. Lauder asked me to come in and see if I could find the source of all these hauntings you've been having lately? I guess no one could find out how they were doing it..."  
  
"Oh..." The janitor's face cleared, then clouded over again at the mention of the hauntings. "Yeah, that would be the football field, over by the bleachers. You come just in the nick of time, young Miss. People were starting to get real scared... Coach thought he might have to cancel the next few games."  
  
She gave him her best disarming smile-and-shrug, or at least the best one she could muster. "Probably just some kids from a rival school making trouble. From what I hear the only reason I got called in is because Mr. Lauder wanted a specialist, someone who knew exactly what to look for so that this whole thing could get cleaned up sooner."  
  
"That right?" the man asked, replacing the mop in the bucket. "Here, I'll walk you over..."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"There's no doubt but that it's been pretty scary here these last few weeks. People keep saying they saw this girl hanging, or strangled, or some such. Of course, no one 'round here believes in ghosts..." he looked sideways at her, as if asking for confirmation that they didn't exist, or wondering if she was going to contradict him.  
  
Merry shrugged. "If Mr. Lauder believed in ghosts, he'd've called in a priest, no doubt. That's good enough for me."   
  
Apparently the dodge was good enough for the janitor, too, because he let the question of whether or not ghosts were real slide. "Well, if you can wrap up this mess, it'll be good for all of us. Got a big game coming up just tomorrow night, and if Coach has to call it off we'll lose by default."  
  
Merry kept her face very still. It was clear that the man was more interested in the football game than the potential distress to students, and from the amount of school pride and pep-squad cheer on the walls the sentiment was a popular one. Oh well. Smiling and nodding wouldn't hurt her any. And besides, they were at the football field.  
  
"Well... thanks for your help." She smiled and shook the man's hand once again, then walked out into the middle of the football field, fingering her pendant.  
  
"It's mostly over there, behind those east-side bleachers," the janitor called. Merry nodded slowly, spinning around in a circle, trying to get a feel for the area.  
  
After one circuit of walking around in a small, slow circle, she thought she was getting dizzy. After the third, she knew she was feeling nauseous, and it wasn't dizziness. The smell of sweat, stale popcorn, gym clothes... it really was like being back in high school again, all the bad parts. That locker-room scent that never really went away until you'd been gone from the entire building a month. Underneath, the smell of jocks having sex with cheerleaders on the locker room benches, or in the bleachers. The smell of blood as it gushed from the noses of the football players who weren't lucky enough to get out of the way. The smell of football leather, of water cooler plastic, of Gatorade.   
  
The memories, the emotions of hundred upon hundreds of teenagers crashed over and through her. Anger, angst, fear, pressure, ecstasy, grief, terror, rage. Joy and sadness, love and hate, mania and depression. Her jaw clenched, her teeth sank into her lip. The pain brought her back, forced her shields back up again.   
  
"Okay, Meredith, that was dumb," she muttered to herself. Her head hurt, inside her mind where her senses, her empathy had been rubbed raw. Something dripped over her upper lip, and she touched her face; her nose was bleeding. "Perfect."  
  
Well. There was no doubt but that this area was the center of an amazing amount of high school trauma. Either that or she just was getting the full brunt of it, having gone through the school building itself with her mind carefully wrapped in its defenses. Either way...   
  
A flicker out of the corner of her eye made her turn. Whatever had been there was gone, but she went towards the spot anyway. Nothing. Her nose was still dripping; she rummaged in her bag for a stray piece of gauze and pressed it to her nose. Well, as long as she was at the east end...  
  
The vial and the salt came out. "I see Grandfather sitting in the east..." she murmured, slowly walking a circle around the field. "He is sacred... he is looking at us..."  
  
As she walked, the small, familiar, comforting blue glow began to radiate from the ground. Also as she walked, the flicker in the corner of her vision became stronger. She had the distinct feeling she was encroaching on someone's territory. Her pace quickened, but her voice and hands remained steady. Inside the circle she would be safe...  
  
"I see Grandfather sitting in the west... he is sacred, he is looking at us..."   
  
The flicker was growing, and she could hear screams in the back of her mind, as if from far away and down a long tunnel. The hair prickled up on the back of her neck in conjunction with that eerie feeling of being watched.   
  
She managed to make it around the field before the ghost came screaming at her. She screamed, and both voices mingled in her ears and in her mind. At the last second she managed to leap aside, skidding along the grass. The ghost slammed into the circle barrier.   
  
"Well, you're not going to come quietly, are you..." Merry muttered, wincing from the already open wounds and standing slowly. The ghost turned and stared at her. The witch was slightly crouched, raven's wing in one hand and holy water and salt dangling precariously from the other. The ghost advanced again, and Merry swung the raven's wing. "Back. Off!"  
  
Light flew from the tips of the feathers. Naked force threw the ghost back, accompanied by the sound of a thunderclap in the distance. At least, Merry hoped anyone in the vicinity would think it was distant thunder. She really didn't want to have to explain why she was going insane in the middle of a football field. The ghost stopped and stared at her, considering.  
  
"What..." it said, and its voice was raspy, sexless, reduced to a husk by the ropes around the ghost's neck. "... are you?"  
  
"Witch..." Merry said, suddenly remembering the stupid chant from that damn movie she had been forced to listen to in school. Witch, witch, you're a bitch.  
  
"Witch..." the ghost repeated, and started towards her very, very slowly. Merry raised the raven's wing, and the ghost started edging around her in a circle. Moving with her, Merry carefully slung her backpack around on her shoulders and reached a hand in, replacing the salt and holy water and grabbing the totem. "Witch..."   
  
"Go back..." Merry whispered. "Go back. Please."   
  
The ghost charged her again. Merry screamed, nearly dropped the totem, and slammed it back with the raven's wing again. She closed her eyes, heart pounding in her chest, and spat out the words before it had a chance to recover and charge her again.   
  
"Cwn Annwn, take this lost soul to your realm let her rest in peace..." Merry gasped, sidestepping at the last minute to avoid another pass by the ghost. "Cwn Annwn, take this soul to your dark realm, let her go in peace..." Deep breaths, dodging the ghost, clutching the totem so hard it dug a pattern into her hand. "Cwn Annwn, take your child..."  
  
The ghost screamed, but this time the hideously mind-breaking sound was mingled with the sound of the ratchet hounds. Familiar as it was, it send a chill down Merry's spine, and gave her the lingering feeling that some day, some day soon, it would be her blood they were baying for. But not today.   
  
Merry dropped the raven's wing and reached into her backpack, again grabbing the salt and holy water. She rubbed salt over her bloody elbow, threw at the ghost. It passed right through, but that didn't matter. "With salt and blood I bind you to your grave," she yelled. Popped open the small vial and flung the last of it. "With water of the moon I bind you to your death. Pass into the lands of the dead and trouble the living no more."  
  
The ratchets were nearing.  
  
"Annwn, take your child..." she screamed as the wind of their passing whipped her hair all around her head, preventing her from seeing anything. Childlike, she sank down into a crouch and grabbed her pendant, hoping they would pass her by. "Morrighan, goddess, protect me..." she murmured, more out of instinct than anything else. "Help me..."  
  
The wind and howling and screaming seemed to last forever. When it finally subsided and she could brush her hair out of her eyes and see again, everything was gone. The faint blue glow of her circle had been dissipated by the sheer force of the ratchet hounds' presence. There was a paw print scorched into the earth as if to remind her of their passing, of their power. She shivered and almost touched it, pulling back at the last minute and stuffing everything she'd dropped into her bag again.   
  
"Bloody ghosts," she muttered. "Bloody magicians who can't keep their own damn experiments to themselves." Merry sighed, glanced skyward with a scowl, and shouldered her backpack again. "I swear, Cyrus, if you weren't already dead, I'd kill you."  
  
It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could hear the old man laugh in response.  
  
Merry shivered again. She clutched her pendant tight in her hand and glanced around to make sure no one had seen the strange display. The field was relatively empty, and she thanked her goddess for small favors; probably everyone had been driven off by the rumors of the ghost. Taking deep breaths, she decided to walk around the field a little longer. She was feeling too shaky to drive anyway. 


	7. The FirstBorn Son

Laurel blatantly ignored her aunt as she packed her emergency kit into a small over-the-shoulder bag. The woman meant well, but she nattered on as though Laurel's life depended on each and every thing that was packed into the bag. Granted, sometimes it did. But today was most likely not going to be one of those times.  
  
Each of the three witches had their own personal field kit, a backpack or a belt pack that held what they thought they would need when they went out alone to do witchery, magic, or other sorts of trouble-shooting. They had the same core elements, but different specifics for each: Where Merry had a raven's wing and an icon of Annwn, Laurel had an amulet that served the same purpose. Where Amber's ritual blades consisted largely of assorted pocket knives, Laurel had a scarred and somewhat ornate dagger that slid easily into a sheath along her leg, accessible through a slit in her jeans pocket.   
  
She put on all of these accoutrements now, and stuffed what couldn't be concealed on her person into her shoulder pack. Most of that was food, water, vitamins, necessities when performing magical activities that might leave the caster drained of energy and strength. Her aunt burbled some more last minute instructions, then subsided into silence when she realized she was being carefully ignored.   
  
"I've been doing this for a long time, Aunt Ashe. I'm not a child anymore. And I haven't had a drink in six years. I know what I'm doing."  
  
Aunt Ashe, wisely, kept her mouth shut.   
  
Laurel heard what she was going to say anyway and sighed. "I should be back in a few hours. If not… well, there's no end of cavalry to send after me, so it should be fine. It's only a child's ghost anyway." That was, she hoped, why Sebastian had sent her after it. She could still feel twinges of pain where the Pilgrimess had raked her over the stomach.   
  
"You're chasing ghosts, Laurel. It's always more trouble than you think when you chase ghosts."   
  
Laurel couldn't tell if Aunt Ashe was speaking realistically or metaphorically. But then it also occurred to Laurel that most people wouldn't think it was quite right to refer to a ghost 'realistically.' "I'll be fine. Besides, if we leave these things floating around, there'll be no end to the trouble they cause."  
  
"But …" Aunt Ashe said, and stopped. They'd had trouble with ghosts before. They knew. She sighed, frustrated. "Just what the bloody hell was this old codger doing with the damn Ocularis anyway?"  
  
"Trying to take over the world, at a guess," Laurel shrugged wryly. "It's not like you can do anything else with it."  
  
"Yes, but why?"  
  
"Because he could." Laurel had never much understood the whys and wherefores behind the less stable of the magical community and, apart from a few select friends, she had never much cared. "Because he had the book and he just couldn't resist the temptation to use it. How the hell am I supposed to know?"  
  
Aunt Ashe sighed. Somewhere in there was the clear assumption that Laurel needed to get out more.   
  
"I'm not going to change for you now, Aunt Ashe. I never was. At least I'm going out there to deal with the bloody problem and not cause more of it, or try and use the Ocularis myself." It came out snappish, but Laurel was tired of dealing with her aunt, the ghosts, and just about everyone and everything else. It was getting close to November again anyway, and she always got crabby around November. But she didn't want to think about that now.  
  
"Of course not," Aunt Ashe snapped back, offended at the very idea that someone in her family might do such a thing. "You've more sense than to go messing around with anything Infernal."  
  
They looked at each other for a moment and then, unexpectedly, they both laughed. The laughter went on and on, at first slightly tinged with hysteria on Laurel's part and then, slowly, they calmed. It broke the tension without shattering either of them, and Laurel hadn't realized how nervous she'd been about facing the ghost until that moment. The thought, or rather the repetition of the knowledge that she had more sense than most magicians came as a relief to her.  
  
"Well, you know these sorcerers," Laurel said. Flippant, but it put them both a little more at ease. "Always messing around in things that they shouldn't, or things that they won't understand…"  
  
"Isn't natural," Aunt Ashe chuckled. "I know. Just you be careful, Laurel. Your mother would haunt me till my dying day if I let anything happen to you."   
  
Laurel shook her head and hugged her Aunt. "She'd haunt you even after your dying day. Which wouldn't be so bad, because then I could kick both your asses."   
  
Her Aunt hugged her back. "Language, girl, we taught you better than that."  
  
"No you didn't," Laurel laughed again. "Uncle Edward swears like a sailor when he gets in full steam."   
  
The other woman shook her head, amused. "Your Uncle Edward was a sailor. At least he has an excuse." Aunt Ashe sighed. "Don't forget, dear heart, if it gets bad enough you can always call n us for help. It wouldn't be the first time…"   
  
"And I doubt it'll be the last. But we did this, Aunt. We may not have built the Ocularis, but we were the careless ones who let the ghosts go wandering off into the general population after it was destroyed, and we should have damned well known better. Especially since we're supposed to be the good guys. So now it's up to us to fix our mistake, and you know that's the way the world works."   
  
Ashleigh nodded. "Come back safe, girl," she hugged her niece fiercely. "Miss Veronica would have my hide for her wall if I let anything happen to you."   
  
-  
  
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-  
  
-  
  
Laurel sighed as she walked up the hill to the old, run-down house. Miss Veronica indeed… they all talked about her as though she was still a young thing growing up in the Depression and the era of the flappers and baseball as the great American past time. The Great American ghosts, the mystery of the dust bowl. Those strange old circus men she kept talking about. They were all, the entire family scared of her. Hell, Laurel was too. But that didn't mean they had to tiptoe around her as though she were made of glass, or worse, as though her every whim was law. At least that was what Laurel told herself. Old habits were hard to break, though.  
  
And none of that sort of thinking was getting the job done. Laurel stood in front of the porch and surveyed the house with sight and Sight. Reptile eyes, the twins called them, cousin Thomas called it 'Camera One, Camera Two.' The family had moved out a week or so ago, driven mad in only a few days by the haunting child who kept threatening their own living children. The house had barely gone up on the market and it was already starting to develop a reputation. Which, really, it didn't deserve. It was a perfectly decent house in a nice enough section of town.   
  
It just happened to have a ghost in it.  
  
A little judicious family influence had gotten her the realtor's passcode and beeper, so getting in the house itself wouldn't be too hard. Laurel rather hoped she wouldn't have to do that, though. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone what she was doing, in any of the potential situations that could arise from her breaking and entering the unowned house.   
  
"First things first, I suppose," she muttered to herself. She reached into her pocket and drew out her dagger, concealing it in her left hand so that the average passer-by on the sidewalk below her wouldn't see it. Right side to invoke, left side to banish. The sinister path. Laurel snorted at her own superstition.  
  
"In the name of Arianrhod I call upon the sylphs and spirits of the wind…"   
  
The words were old, formulaic, familiar. The ritual opening itself was as old as anything else her family had carried with them across the Atlantic ocean, and it carried with it the power and weight of that age. The impact, too, because no sooner had she finished the East quarter and moved on to the South than a spectral arrow came shooting across the space where she had been. She ignored it placidly, although inside her stomach was churning itself into knots, and kept going.  
  
"In Kai's name I call upon the salamanders and spirits of the flame…"   
  
"Stop that!"   
  
It was a child's voice, no doubt of that. The arrogance of a young, spoiled boy. Familiar in its arrogance, actually; the child had the same tone of voice she'd heard her own cousin Donald use, before Janet had started to grow and developed the uncanny ability to find each and every soft spot in their fights. Being beaten by a girl had done wonders for Donald's overbearing egotism. Laurel smiled tightly, nervously. Maybe the same would be true here. Her stomach, her chest ache where the Pilgrimess had raked her over.   
  
"In the name of Llyr I call upon the selkies and spirits of the water…"   
  
"Stop that!"   
  
This time the arrow creased her ribs; she hadn't turned away fast enough. Laurel swore, to herself, inside her mind, and moved just a little bit faster to complete the circle.  
  
"In the name of Cerridwen I call upon the stones and the spirits of the earth…" she paused and flattened herself just in time as the arrow went whistling over her head. From the ground she completed it. "…to seal this place as sacred, to guard and protect me, to aid in the work that I must do. In the name of the Goddess, so shall it be."  
  
The boy screamed, charging her, waving his bow like a club. For which Laurel was actually rather grateful as she stepped into the now complete circle that hummed around her with a reassuring resonance. She was able to duck and dodge the angry kid with relative ease, and the blows from the bow left only welts, as oppose the potential deadliness of the arrows. She grabbed the bow after the first couple of minutes, though, and practically yanked it out of the boy's hands. He lunged after it and she held him away from the bow with a firm hand on his head, staring down calmly as he unloaded angry punches into thin air.   
  
"Let me go!" he screamed. "Let me go let me go let me go!"  
  
"Are you going to behave yourself?" she asked. The scowl on his face told her even if the boy himself was keeping silent. She picked up the bow and made as if to break it.  
  
"No!"  
  
"Then behave yourself." Dear God, she thought to herself with sardonic, amazed humor. He really is a spoiled brat. Sebastian, what the hell were you thinking. You know I don't have any sort of patience for these kids.  
  
"I don't have to," the boy said. His expression had smoothed itself into what would have been polite arrogance if he had been old enough to carry it off. As it was he just looked the acceptable side of pouty. "You're not my mother."  
  
"No. Your mother's long gone from this place. And you should be too, if you had any idea of what's good for you. This place isn't for you anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on long ago."  
  
"My mother's not gone," he snapped. "She's just on holiday."  
  
Laurel sighed. "How long have you been out here? Or better yet, how long were you in that infernal idiot's glass house? Months? Years?" She looked the kid up and down. "From the way you're dressed I'm guessing it's years. Do you even know how long you were in there?"  
  
The kid shook his head slowly. "No…" and then in a burst of rapid speech. "I don't like you you're not very nice you're mean and I want my bow back!"  
  
"You'll get it back when you stop acting like a spoiled brat and start …" she wanted to say 'acting your age' but she had the sinking feeling that the boy was acting his age. "Behaving like a nice little gentleman. You're not going to get out of here until I let you, anyways, so you might as well."   
  
"I don't believe you," he mumbled, and rushed the circle. Laurel just crossed her arms and stared at him in amusement as he bounced off the inner wall. "Ow!"  
  
"Told you."  
  
"I hate you!"  
  
"Good. That is an excellent place to start."  
  
Silence. Laurel rather suspected the poor kid didn't know how to deal with that, or with her in general. He tried hitting the wall a couple of times, to no avail. Laurel folded her arms over her chest and kept a tight grip on the bow, secure in the knowledge that there was no way that kid was bringing down her circle until she was damn good and ready to let it fall. After a while the boy seemed to realize this and sat down at the edge of the circle with an expression of frustration that might eventually lead to tears, as it so often did in young children.  
  
"Are you done?" Laurel asked calmly.  
  
"I hate you."  
  
"Fine." Laurel took a deep breath. "You don't have to like me. But you're not supposed to be here anymore, and it's my job to see that you get to where you have to go."  
  
"I'm supposed to be with Mother and Father," the child insisted. "I'm supposed to be in school."  
  
You're supposed to be dead, Laurel thought, but she knew better than to say it. "School was over for you a long time ago, I'm afraid." For all I know your mother and father are dead too. "It's time for you to be going along now."  
  
"Where, with you?" The boy had a fairly healthy amount of scorn in his voice for a kid. "Mother said not to trust strangers, even if they are pretty girls."  
  
"You're a little young to start paying attention to pretty girls," Laurel said sharply. "And if Mother told you never to talk to strangers, what were you doing running off with a man who stuck you in a glass box for years?"  
  
The boy looked down. "He talked to me. He knew who I was. No one talks to me anymore. They just scream and run away when I try to play with them."  
  
Laurel sighed. She walked over and sat down beside the boy, resisting the urge to invite him to sit down next to her since it wouldn't do much good anyway. For all she knew he'd go right through the dirt. "That's because you're not supposed to be here anymore, kiddo. You should have moved on years ago, you just didn't know it at the time. And no one got a chance to explain it to you 'cause the damned fool went and stuck you in a glass box like a spectral battery." Maybe now was the time to tell him. "You're gone, kid. Or at least you should be."  
  
"No!" The kid started yelling and throwing himself at her again, beating at her with his fists. She put her arms up to protect her head. Clearly, it hadn't been time. "No! You're lying! You're wrong and you're lying and I hate you! I want my mother!"  
  
"Your mother buried you years ago!" Laurel yelled, out of patience and out of sympathy and more affected by having to talk to the ghost of a child than she would admit, even to herself. "You're dead! You've been dead for years! Your mother buried you and moved on with her life! And now you've got to move on with yours…" The kid was crying. Laurel sighed. "It's either that or I've got to move you along. And trust me, you won't like it if I have to do it."  
  
The kid stared at her. Laurel stared back. Neither of them was comfortable with the other's presence, and they both knew it. Laurel wondered yet again what the hell Sebastian had meant in bringing her here. She was getting very, very tired. And she didn't want to have to deal with this kid, or any of the ghosts anymore. Especially this kid. It reminded her far too much of her own situation, years ago.   
  
"Will it hurt?" the boy asked finally.   
  
"No." Laurel sighed. "No it won't."  
  
"Okay…" The boy was already starting to fade, but he seemed not to have noticed yet. "Um. How do I do it?"  
  
"Just… give up. Give in." A small smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "Head towards the light. Or something."   
  
"Okay…" he sounded scared. But he was fading fast, which meant he was probably on his way to where he should be. Probably.   
  
"Hey!" Something occurred to Laurel, then. "You might want this." She heaved the bow at the kid, who caught it with a sudden and heartfelt grin. "Never know what kind of people you might meet on the other side."  
  
"Thank you kindly, little lady," the boy said in what he probably thought of fondly as a Western-style accent. Laurel just shook her head and watched as the boy disappeared, then waited a good while longer before she went around dispelling the circle.   
  
"Sebastian, what the hell are you doing to me…" 


End file.
